[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] Making Haskell more open

Gour list at atmarama.org
Sun Nov 13 16:22:52 EST 2005


Sven Panne (Sven.Panne at aedion.de) wrote:

>  * DocBook XML can be transformed into a very rich collection of output 
> formats: XHTML, HTML Help, DVI, PS, PDF, FO, plain text, etc. etc.

txt2tags has the following backends: HTML, XHTML, SGML, LaTeX, Lout,
man, Magic Point, Moin Moin, Page Maker 6.0 & plain text.

>  * But what's more important: Compared to the more exotic markup mechanisms 
> proposed, it is well-known and extremely well documented. There are tons of 
> web sites, books, articles, etc. etc. about DocBook XML. Proposing more 
> arcane technologies will drastically reduce the amount of people actually 
> contributing to an Open Source project, a fact which is easily overlooked. 

But don't forget, as it was already stated, get the whole working-chain ready 
for authoring in Docbook is not at all ready and for one not proficient
in emacs with SGML mode it is very difficult to write texts with so many
tags.

otoh, e.g. for 'txt2tags' python is the only requirement and it is
therefore multi-platform soulution where one can start writing
documentation in 15min.

Besides that, 'txt2tags-like technology' is already in use for some time
- e.g AFT (http://www.maplefish.com/todd/aft.html) dating back in '99
and XMLmind XML Editor has plugin which supports (similar) markup called 
APT (http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/apt/apt_format.html) 

quote: "Aptconvert is an OpenSource command-line tool that can be used
to convert the APT format to HTML, XHTML, PDF, PostScript, (MS Word
loadable) RTF, DocBook SGML and DocBook XML."

However, the main point in using such tool is productivity & simplicity.

How many tags from DocBook DTD are actually used in GHC manual and how
many of them are required for HTML output?

Sincerely,
Gour

-- 
Registered Linux User	| #278493
GPG Public Key		| 8C44EDCD
 


More information about the Haskell-Cafe mailing list