On Tue, 2002-04-09 at 16:46, Derek D. Martin wrote: > > > Derek's issue here is that he hates writing documentation. No > > amount of technology is going to change that. :-) > > Actually I don't really mind writing documentation, though I certainly > don't love it. The real problem is that I have no interest in > learning some semi-arcane formatting language to do it. That's what > computers are for: to take the tedium out of tasks. What I want is an > editor that lets me just write what I have to say and takes care of > inserting all the obscure formatting tags for me. Or, best put, I > want Lyx to have better DocBook support and a less visually abrasive > user interface. I really don't like looking at Xforms applications > (or Tk, or Motif, or Athena for that matter).
Again, documentation is really low on most people's scales. In addition, many tech writers are not as coding-qualified as...say... their counterparts in engineering or QA, who have the ability, time, and need to write code. Tech people get stuck with Word or FrameMaker. One tech writer I worked with 18 months ago was still using a DOS-based app because it was the best tool he'd found for creating docs. Wish I knew the name of it.... > Paul L. will no doubt pipe up here with a "function over form" comment, > to which I generally would agree... But I'll also add that it doesn't > always matter how functional a thing is if you can't stand to look at > it. :) For me, I get around it by formatting the DocBook tags, so it almost looks and flows like C (instead of Perl). If you take a look at the source to the LAG, I've broken out many sections into their own files, things are indented based on how many layers of tags I have, etc. It's become somewhat natural for me now and I'm used to it. Depending on the editor you use (see the LAG for a small overview) you can have tags highlighted so they stand out, some can validate tags on-the-fly, and psgml will present you with a list of valid tags for your location and can close tags for you automagically. BTW, LAG = http://www.tldp.org/LDP/LDP-Author-Guide/ I need to do some housekeeping with the doc, but the gist of everything is still there, and the source for it is available through anoncvs. One other thing, and it gets to be a sore point with the LDP at times. I'd avoid using the linuxdoc DTD if you run across it. Many seem to think that it's a much easier to use than DocBook (it is), BUT the tools for it are nowhere near as advanced as those for DB. LyX does output Linuxdoc, so you're free to try it. -Mark ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
