On Nov 15, 2005, at 20:23 , Alvaro Herrera wrote:
Bruce Momjian wrote:
I am still unclear why there is no more reliable SGML toolchain
for PDF
output after all these years. Seems things have improved because
we now
have bookmarks, but still, why is this functionality not more
mainstream.
There is no SGML toolchain because SGML has been abandoned as the
DocBook markup language. The toolchain that everybody else uses is
based on XML DocBook. It has been proposed that we abandon SGML and
jump to XML, but the idea has been shot down. And it's possible to
convert our SGML to XML automatically and process it with the newer
toolchain.
It's my understanding that it hasn't been shot down as much as no one
has shown that it will serve our needs. IIRC, there are two issues:
Marked sections: SGML DocBook (which is currently used) supports
parameter entities to be used to include or exclude certain
sections of material depending on the desired output. Profiling in
XML DocBook may be able to accomplish the same task.
XML DocBook toolchain: making sure the tools to produce the
documentation in its myriad forms (e.g., html, manpages, PDF) works.
(Just for history repeating itself, this was brought up Aug 2004 as
well :) )
I don't think anyone's standing in the way. It's just that no one's
shown that the XML toolchain can do the work for us.
Michael Glaesemann
grzm myrealbox com
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
