Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
Gary Schnabl wrote, regarding a discussion taking place on the
doc-...@ooo list:
BTW, FrameMaker 7.0 is available for the Macintosh. And recent UNIX
versions of FrameMaker are also available. Anything in the FM7 series
should be cheap via eBay. FrameMaker 8 or 9 would not be necessary
for DocBook, as even the "ancient" (still used in some houses)
pre-2002 FM 6 would suffice.
UNIX isn't Linux. Do any versions work on Linux? When you say "cheap",
what
approximate price do you mean? Can people outside the US also get FM
cheap?
As far as FrameMaker is considered for DocBook editing/writing (aka
"structured authoring"), having that application would not be necessary
for each level of participation. XML, by itself, is fairly platform
independent. So, almost any application that can edit XML could
contribute its value-added to the document as save it as XML.
However, at some point some formatted output would be needed, and that
would be specific to its end uses and end users. FrameMaker uses its EDD
file for its dedicated formatting of one or more documents, depending on
a project's preconditions. There are other open-source and proprietary
apps for XML formatting. FrameMaker is nice because of it WYSIWYG features.
As to buying any software on eBay, I got my Adobe Acrobat Professional 8
from an established eBay dealer (no auction bidding necessary) for
around 20% to 25% of its former street price just after Adobe introduced
its version 9. You can even dicker on whatever price they want, and they
might come down even lower. Buying and selling horses (or anything else)
is negotiable on eBay. BTW, my physical medium DVD or CDROM (I forgot
which) Acrobat Pro 8 had a COA, for registration purposes.
Similar deals are available for almost anything. Right now, some dealers
are selling fully registerable versions (legal, not bootleg) of Corel
vector-graphics software applications especially cheap (80% off? Corel's
store prices) because Corel itself is trying to reduce its own
inventories this month, apparently.
Google "XML editors" for searching several free or cheap shareware
XML editors (48,000 hits--add freeware and there are still 16,000 hits).
It's been awhile since I looked for "free or cheap XML editors" so
perhaps
things have changed. In my experience, the free or cheap ones were far
from easy
to use for anyone not familiar with, and comfortable working with, XML
code. Any
program that provided a reasonably WYSIWYG front-end, and was
therefore easy to
use, was expensive. If something that fits my criteria has shown up in
the past
year or so, I would genuinely like to hear about it.
Just get the appropriate DocBook DTD or other schema and start
converting any OOo documents into DocBook XML.
Someone would have to find -- or set up -- "the appropriate DocBook
DTD or other
schema" and make it, plus instructions on what to do with it,
available to
anyone who wanted to do this. I vaguely know what a schema is, but
haven't a
clue how to choose one, put it to use, or explain to anyone else how
to use it.
I've actually wanted to learn about this, and write about it, for some
time, but
I don't even know where to start. The last time I looked, the
explanations I
found made no sense to me; they relied on prior knowledge that I don't
have.
The DTDs are readily available for free download from the two primary
DocBook parent sources... From the DTD file, an EDD file (for
FrameMaker) is generated for use in various templates. An EDD can be
absolutely huge--like mine, covering all DocBook elements, or they can
be abridged and targeted to specific end uses and users.
However, a very detailed OOo-to-DocBook style guide would be
necessary so that useful structured documents result.
What would this involve? Who would produce it? How would it be applied
and by
whom? It sounds to me like another big hurdle, but I'd like to be wrong.
Barriers may not be insurmountable, but they are still barriers. And
even if we
all thought your idea was the way to go, *someone* would have to lead
the rest
of us by the hand, in order to implement the idea.
DocBook structured authoring/editing would have to be configured to
whichever agencies wanted it configured. That has absolutelt nothing to
do with platforms or applications. The DocBook XML would have to adhere
to house style guide dictates--for any end users.
To that end, if authors/editors were using FrameMaker, that would be a
no-brainer after some learning is acquired--just like any other
application. A template could be set up that would guide the lower-level
writers and editors into entering content, in accordance with DocBook
structure and if a formatted template is provided (instead of a database
template, for example), its displayed styles would naturally follow from
whatever was programmed into its various EDD files and templates into
which the EDDs were imported..
--Jean
