On Tue, 29 Feb 2000, Robin Berjon wrote:
: At 10:45 29/02/2000 -0800, Abby Franquemont wrote:
: >I'm looking for such discussion, but not finding it -- if anyone has any
: >pointers for where I'd find it, please let me know.
:
: At
: http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/1999-08/thrd12.html#0
: 1121 there's a thread that doesn't keep a constant subject line and wanders
: onto many topics but contains some reference to pod and xml. I think it
: starts with "No Subject, Larry Wall".
Thanks so much! Lovely little flamewar. So, let me say a little about my
stance or vision and y'all can smack me around if you're so inclined.
First of all, I'm a vi person. So everything I do is either in vi or vim,
or riddled with :wq! and escapes and stuff. So I don't like to generate
text that I'm working on anything too much fancier than plain ol' ASCII.
I'm not a word-processor user or what have you and I'm not even as
fancy-minded as, say, an xemacs user. So I want something that I can use
to take something I would write in POD, dump it into an SGML file fitting
a basic DTD, or vice-versa. And I want to be able to hand that DTD to
someone using FrameMaker, and say, "Here, generate it so it fits this."
: There's also a thread starting with message
: http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2000-02/msg00088.html
: about XPOD.
Yup, and that message pretty much envisions something similar to what I
was thinking would be useful for me (and Russ commented he'd probably use
something like that also, so maybe I'm not totally off base and wacky
here.
: >The other question, perhaps obvious, that I figured I should answer is, if
: >there's already a module to turn POD into SGML in the DocBook DTD, why
: >write a DTD just for POD, and tools to turn it into that? The quickest
: >glib answer off the tip of my tongue is "Because I don't really like the
: >DocBook DTD all that much," and also because I think this would be a very
: >simple, straightforward DTD, which could among other things be easily
: >given to anyone who develops documentation in SGML, work with SGML-aware
: >tools, and generate SGML files which readily map to POD.
:
: Well I guess I'm not the only one who would rather avoid having to work
: with DocBook...
I haven't worked extensively with DocBook, but I find it frustrating
compared to many of the DTDs with which I'm really familiar, which are
primarily robust DTDs for scientific, technical, and medical journal
publication.
Gregor Purdy indicates in that thread that he's working on a DTD so I'll
contact him as well and inquire as to where he's at and so forth and see
what comes of that.
BTW, I actually am not subbed to pod-people so would appreciate cc's on
any discussion until I am subbed, if folks want me to see it.
Cheers,
Abby
Abby Franquemont "I might have amnesia -- but I'm not stupid!"
J. Random BOFH --Jackie Chan
