On Tue, 21 Aug 2001 09:28:48 -0400, Berin Loritsch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That's fine. I was refering to the links on the side that are present
> in the current printable docs. The whole point is that the tables used
> on those pages constrain the browser, and cause the pages to cut off
> the important text on the right side of the page when printed.
Ah, I see. Sorry about the confusion.
> > Why do we develop new stylesheets for DocBook? There is already a
> > project, DocBook-XSL, of Norman Walsh and many others, the DocBook
> > author, which has fairly extensive stylesheets. There are stylesheets
> > that generate HTML, XHTML and XML FO. The system is setup such that is
> > fairly easy to customize your own look and feel for the generated
> > output. I think we should use this rather than spend the energy on
> > creating our own stuff.
>
> I have looked at those, and tried to use them. They are slow,
> cumbersome, and difficult to customize. Moreover, the results are
> kind of ugly. Part of this is due to the great many things Norman
> Walsh is doing to get 100% of DocBook working through XSL. The
> stylesheets I wrote for Avalon are fast, simple, and easy to
> customize. They do not try to do 100% of DocBook, awaiting
> customization for elements as they are needed--instead of trying to
> build the whole thing at one time.
Few comments:
1) What's the point in using DocBook if we are not using all its
features?
2) I bet one year down the road the DocBook stylesheets will be as
complex as Norman Walsh's. We will slowly keep adding support for the
missing tags, to the point our stylesheets very complex too. Also we
need to generate XML FO for PDF documents. This will complicate the
stylesheets even more.
IMO we should not spend our time and energy developing them, and
instead focus on what's important. If we can use DocBook-XSL we should
try to use it.
> > Should we try to use one of the Web FAQ tools out there? I especially
> > like the way the PHP documentation is setup (see for example
> > http://www.php.net/manual/en/functions.php). It allows external
> > contributors, not only commiters to add their own comments to the
> > documentation. It's a very powerful and loosely coupled way of
> > collaborating, especially on FAQs, and documentation examples.
>
> This is Cocoon after all, we could do our own....
> There is also the Apache FAQ tool that is up and down, and needs maintenance.
> It can't be customized to make it look like Cocoon's site.
Sure, just make a note somewhere we need to implement or use such a
tool.
Greetings,
--
Ovidiu Predescu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://orion.nsr.hp.com/ (inside HP's firewall only)
http://sourceforge.net/users/ovidiu/ (my SourceForge page)
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Monitor/7464/ (GNU, Emacs, other stuff)
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