Garnier Garnier wrote: > Hello Listers, > > I am about to explore DocBook. I am sure some of the listers must be using it > or have used it in the past. Could you please share your experience? Went > through some of the details over the net and it seems a good tool to switch > to but involves a very deep learning curve. Is there any plug-in available to > make things easier? I need to know this as some of the writers are not keen > to learn XML and would rather click buttons that would take care of what they > want to generate. The company will definitely not invest in training nor am I > aware of any institute/entity in India that imparts training in DocBook. > > When I start exploring I will definitely join the DocBook user forum. Am > writing to this list as I need some firsthand information about the tool. > > Any kind of related information is welcome. > > TIA > B/R > Garnier >
In order to do DocBook XML, all you need is FrameMaker 7.0 or higher in order to do it fairly effortlessly--once you have your plan of action clearly thought out. An XML editor might make some of the work easier--for doing various tasks or for studying DocBook XML. The older (2002 or so) Adobe documentation has some (some limited, some fairly detailed...) information on how to start. Basically, you need to take a DocBook DTD of one of the available versions: say, 4.1.2, 4.x (up to 4.5), or use the incomplete DocBook 5.0 DTD to start with. You can download them from various sources--the best being DocBook itself. Then, you set up a simple structure application, using the appropriate files (read/write rules file, DTD file, struct-app file, etc.). Then use FrameMaker to generate an EDD file. In my case, I generated the most general EDD file (huge) that covers practically everything that FrameMaker can do, which you can reduce afterwards in order to apply one of more concise, especially formatted EDDs for your project. Or just keep using the huge general EDD. Your choice. Gary
