X-posting thread here for the interested ...
> My concern around XML is purely ease of editing, particularly for
> lowering the barrier to community contributions. And by that I not
only
> mean ease of editing as in having a WYSIWYG editor, but also the idea
that
> it's too difficult for most people to learn all the tags, and most of
them
> aren't needed anyway (I think for the DTrace and MDB guides,
totalling
> close to 800 pages of content, we used no more than about 20 tags).
DocBook seems to be heavily slanted toward writing _books_. I strongly
agree it is a bigger hammer than most folks are going to want or need,
and at first DocBook seems completely overwhelming (especially for
folks uninitiated to XML). Publishing a small guide which lists the most
useful tags for community documentation could address that to some
degree.
Another lingering problem is that all content XML editors I have
investigated are either A) outrageously expensive and proprietary, or B)
woefully inadequate for the job. I do my DocBook editing in JEdit using the
XML and XInclude plugins. It is quite cumbersome even with all the
features the environment provides. I probably won't make enough money from
the book I am creating to even pay for tools in the A) category. :)
The constraint that all community content generation needs to plugin to
the same toolchain so that i18n and formatted objects can be apply
from books to HOWTOs to whatever is a difficult one. While Wikis of all
shapes and sizes seem to overcome both of the above problems, the XML
constraint has been a sticking point.
> (a) wiki software that can store the data in docbook XML as the
> underlying representation, or
I don't know if such a thing exists. Maybe someone here has already
done some research. If it existed I have a feeling it would already be
used in this community. ;)
> (b) wiki software that provides enough of a structure in its
underlying
> representation for a script to extract that data as docbook XML
That would be the holy grail. To date all Wikis I have seen are
targeted toward formatting markup rather than semantic markup, despite the
fact that both are just as easy to handle in output if you generate HTML4
+ CSS.
Another option is to roll a POD-like lightweight markup language to
support the twenty-or-so "really useful" DocBook tags, and write a tool
that spits out the DocBook XML. It isn't as "cool" as a Wiki, but it is a
lot simpler to throw together to meet any immediate needs that aren't
being addressed.
Longer term I think seeking a Wiki+XML solution would suit the
community best.
- Eric
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