From owner-freebsd-doc Tue Jun 4 19:33:23 1996 Return-Path: owner-doc Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id TAA05849 for doc-outgoing; Tue, 4 Jun 1996 19:33:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov (gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov [137.75.131.181]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id TAA05834 for ; Tue, 4 Jun 1996 19:33:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from emu.fsl.noaa.gov (kelly@emu.fsl.noaa.gov [137.75.60.32]) by gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id CAA11953; Wed, 5 Jun 1996 02:33:16 GMT Message-Id: <199606050233.CAA11953@gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov> Received: by emu.fsl.noaa.gov (1.40.112.3/16.2) id AA029021995; Tue, 4 Jun 1996 20:33:15 -0600 Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 20:33:15 -0600 From: Sean Kelly To: chuckr@Glue.umd.edu Cc: FreeBSD-doc@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: (message from Chuck Robey on Tue, 4 Jun 1996 21:40:23 -0400 (EDT)) Subject: Re: Linuxdoc Sender: owner-doc@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk >>>>> "Chuck" == Chuck Robey writes: Chuck> The sheer generality of sgml has always defeated me. I agree. I can't believe that some documentation units will require SGML experience and then spend the next month or two training a new hire on the specifics of their own DTD. SGML is easy---it's just angle brackets. It's the specific DTDs that are hard! Chuck> Are there any other possibilities for discussion? How about WYSIWYG tools? Have we all set in our ``me too'' messages to that one company that produces an office suite that Jordan Hubbard announced several weeks ago? While I like being able to focus entirely on substance instead of on format with tools like TeX, *roff, and even SGML, the best document production package I ever used was Interleaf. Sure, it was WYSIWYG, but it had the best thought out document structuring system I've ever used. The user interface blew all the others away. I spend all of my time mousing around with FrameMaker, but Interleaf's context sensitive popup menus with intelligent defaults were quite a joy and a heck of a lot easier on the wrist. It had superb revision control and document locking for large projects. And for special requirements for certain projects, we'd just write some custom Interleaf Lisp to do the job---yes, it's the Emacs of desktop publishing. But, it seems like they're going out of business---if they haven't already. Okay, back to the topic: other possibilities. Interleaf's an impossibility, but I don't know of any other freely available (or not) tools besides TeX, groff, and our good ol' linuxdoc. And of those, some kind of SGML-based tool still seems like a good choice if it at least means that most the groffers and the TeXies will be on common footing---plus we could have an automatic conversion of our source documents from linuxdoc to whatever its successor might be. And to be honest, it's not all that hard to use linuxdoc or another DTD especially if there are good instructions available. The fellow who made linuxdoc had some instructions on how to use it that weren't too bad. And the Emacs SGML helper mode certainly does work well in reminding you what's legal at a certain point and what's not. After awhile, it becomes second nature. Even reading the DTD specification files starts to make sense! :-) -- Sean Kelly NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory kelly@fsl.noaa.gov Boulder Colorado USA http://www-sdd.fsl.noaa.gov/~kelly/