Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 17:34:17 +0930 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Nik Clayton <nik@FreeBSD.org>, Murray Stokely <murray@FreeBSD.org> Cc: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>, Bob Willcox <bob@immure.com>, Paul Richards <paul@freebsd-services.com>, Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>, Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>, developers@FreeBSD.org, hackers@FreeBSD.org, doc@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: troff vs. DocBook (was: Request for submissions: FreeBSD Bi-Monthly Development Status Report (fwd)) Message-ID: <20020729080417.GD68969@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <20020729000024.D7467@freebsdmall.com> <20020724203156.GB58018@clan.nothing-going-on.org> References: <20020721141108.GA30472@luke.immure.com> <82745.1027266137@critter.freebsd.dk> <20020722002823.GB69834@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020729000024.D7467@freebsdmall.com> <20020721141108.GA30472@luke.immure.com> <82745.1027266137@critter.freebsd.dk> <20020722002823.GB69834@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020724203156.GB58018@clan.nothing-going-on.org>
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On Wednesday, 24 July 2002 at 21:31:56 +0100, Nik Clayton wrote: > On Mon, Jul 22, 2002 at 09:58:23AM +0930, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: >> IMO the tags aren't the problem with DocBook. It's just *really* >> difficult to get good-looking results with. > > What did you think of the 2nd edition of the Handbook? That was Docbook > toolchain all the way (with the possible exception of some small > hand-tweaks to the finished postscript by Murray). I've taken a look at the book again. Yes, it's clean. I don't like the small fonts and the excessive leading and other vertical spacing, but I suppose that could be fixed in the style sheets. There are also a number of widows and orphans, for example the top(1) example on page 99/100. I also suspect that massaging the PostScript was to get round some annoyances of using DocBook. On Monday, 29 July 2002 at 0:00:24 -0700, Murray Stokely wrote: > [CC: changed to a more appropriate mailing list, original list BCCed] > > On Mon, Jul 22, 2002 at 09:58:23AM +0930, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: >> IMO the tags aren't the problem with DocBook. It's just *really* >> difficult to get good-looking results with. I've actually converted >> the FreeBSD book into DocBook (anybody want a perl script?), but jade >> can't format it, and gmat is a real kludge. Theoretically, DocBook is >> better, but I want something that works. > > Hey Greg, > > What's the problem with jade? Hmm. Looking back on what I said there, I'm jumping to conclusions. What I meant was that I needed to use gmat because it contains the O'Reilly style sheets. That's not really a jade issue. > I will certainly agree that it is difficult to get good-looking > results with jade, but you should at least be able to format your > document and get a valid PostScript file with Norm's default > stylesheets. Yes, I've been able to do that with gmat. Given that it worked (and a lot faster than jade, too), I didn't try using jade. If I had done, I fear I would have run into some horrendous problems due to my lack of understanding of the maze of configuration files. > Did TeX run out of resources? Did you bump up the memory allocation > in texmf.cnf? I do recall doing this in the past. This isn't really a sound-off about DocBook, just about the relative turgidity of the tools. I've tried reading the DocBook book, and I've found it very confusing. A large part of the problem, though, is simply the fact that I'm happy with troff, and I haven't seen enough advantage in DocBook to migrate to it. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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