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Cc: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>,
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From: Michael Glaesemann <grzm@myrealbox.com>
Subject: Re: [DOCS] 8.1 PDF Documentation.
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 20:42:18 +0900
To: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>


On Nov 15, 2005, at 20:23 , Alvaro Herrera wrote:

> Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
>> I am still unclear why there is no more reliable SGML toolchain  
>> for PDF
>> output after all these years.  Seems things have improved because  
>> we now
>> have bookmarks, but still, why is this functionality not more  
>> mainstream.
>
> There is no SGML toolchain because SGML has been abandoned as the
> DocBook markup language.  The toolchain that everybody else uses is
> based on XML DocBook.  It has been proposed that we abandon SGML and
> jump to XML, but the idea has been shot down.  And it's possible to
> convert our SGML to XML automatically and process it with the newer
> toolchain.

It's my understanding that it hasn't been shot down as much as no one  
has shown that it will serve our needs. IIRC, there are two issues:

> Marked sections: SGML DocBook (which is currently used) supports  
> parameter entities to be used to include or exclude certain  
> sections of material depending on the desired output. Profiling in  
> XML DocBook may be able to accomplish the same task.
>
> XML DocBook toolchain: making sure the tools to produce the  
> documentation in its myriad forms (e.g., html, manpages, PDF) works.

(Just for history repeating itself, this was brought up Aug 2004 as  
well :) )

I don't think anyone's standing in the way. It's just that no one's  
shown that the XML toolchain can do the work for us.

Michael Glaesemann
grzm myrealbox com