RE: Kudos and question

[Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc@cu-portland.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pal Domokos [mailto:pal.domokos@usa.net]
> Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 7:08 AM
> To: ldp-discuss@lists.linuxdoc.org
> Subject: Kudos and question
> 
> Hi,
> 
> First of all, kudos to Guylhem, Joshua, Greg, Stein, Jorge, David
> and all others who run the linuxdoc project and site: you're doing an
> excellent job. If only spam could be kept away from this list ...
>
> I have a few questions about the current state of the DocBook-ization
> of linuxdoc. Perhaps it would be beneficial to all authors if somebody
> clarified these issues.
> 
> So: all existing HOWTOs had been converted to DocBook, as we all know.
> Furthermore, HOWTOs are now accepted in DocBook format also.
> My question is: what if I decide to migrate to DocBook and send all
> future updates of my HOWTO in this format? How will the LinuxDoc
> version of the HOWTO get updated? Or is the DocBook format the
> "official" source now and are all other, non-SGML variants
> produced from this source? In this case, we probably don't need
> the files in LinuxDoc format any more.
> (Not that I'm eager to move to DocBook: I read Jorge's tutorial,
> then took a look at Norman Walsh's book and decided that I needed
> a tool to cope with this DTD. I don't know if the DocBook support
> in Lyx is good enough for an average HOWTO.)

As soon as an author feels ready, and writes their own HOWTO in DocBook, the
LinuxDoc version will be removed, the the DocBook version becomes the
official source, and all other outputs are generated from that.  I just want
to make a couple of points for people who are moving to DocBook.  First,
while we've run the LinuxDoc HOWTOs through a script to convert them to
DocBook, DocBook has FAR more features for technical writers than LinuxDoc
did.  The DocBook "output" of your HOWTO may be a good starting point, or
you may wish to start from scratch.  I believe that to take advantage of
some of the features of DocBook, you'll probably need MORE markup in your
document, but it will allow things like much better searching, and better
integration into online help tools, like the new GNOME Help browser (which
is still a few months off).  I'm eager for DocBook 5.0 (towards the end of
this year), and Mozilla, because they will allow the use of XML.  This will
allow people to use the native DocBook version of HOWTOs, with all of their
special markup for key words, and for index terms, etc. to make the HOWTOs
much easier to glean information out of.  I think I've rambled enough,
please let me know if you have more questions.

> Miscellaneous: about a month ago somebody sent a guide, called RUTE,
> to this list, as a donation to linuxdoc. Has anybody answered 
> the post?

I don't know, I'll go see if I can find that message.  I don't recall
reading that message.
	Greg


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