Re: Authorship

[Gary Preckshot <garrell@inreach.com>]

Gregory Leblanc wrote:

>ok, leaving end tags off is BAD, I sent a message saying why.  I've read
some of the HOWTOs in LinuxDoc format, and I find the lack of end tags
disturbing.  I also don't think that the ld2db stuff is quite as good as it
could be.

I agree with this in spades. There are several very good reasons:

1) It's non-standard. It doesn't make sense to embrace a standard and then
deviate from it.

2) Lack of end tags makes parsers much harder to write. End tags remove
ambiguity.

3) There are good editors (emacs, WordPerfect, and probably more) that
automatically generate end tags when they put in start tags. Just because some
rugged individualists insist on using text editors is no reason to relax
standards. If they want to keep editing SGML in the raw, they should pay the
whole price for their preference.

Why go to the trouble of standardizing on DocBook, and immediately deviate from
it? The whole idea of using standards is to be able to use new versions when they
come out. LDP is using DocBook so they don't have to write the DTD and so they
can use tools that are easily available. Why ruin that?

Gary


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