Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 20:33:15 -0600 From: Sean Kelly <kelly@fsl.noaa.gov> To: chuckr@Glue.umd.edu Cc: FreeBSD-doc@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Linuxdoc Message-ID: <199606050233.CAA11953@gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov> In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.960604212648.26610G-100000@ginger.eng.umd.edu> (message from Chuck Robey on Tue, 4 Jun 1996 21:40:23 -0400 (EDT))
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>>>>> "Chuck" == Chuck Robey <chuckr@Glue.umd.edu> 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/
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