Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook
On Tue, 28 Jan 2003 17:11:27 +0100 Stefan Drees [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (My previous post too fast and far too useless, sorry) On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 03:45:50PM +0100 - a wonderful day - Gour wrote: Corey Arnold ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: I am considering using DocBook to create a Manual of Procedures. Ideally I'd like to do so in an environment that is easy for those who are unfamiliar with programming and mark up to understand. Currently I am trying to use XMLSPY. If someone has attempted this before ... Editing the sample DocBook instances in xmlspy (a c++-driven parser/gui if i remember that correctly) makes my w2k governed 800 MHz AMD Duron with 256 MB Memory become very ssslllow. So I guess a 1000 pages Manual of Procedures with a lot of figures and indexes etc. might make the experience of pure content editing in the so called authentic view a bit unsatisfactory. Well, if you really need to have the whole document in one file instead of using XInclude ... What about Emacs for Windows? -- Alexandre Prokoudine ALT Linux Documentation Team JID: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook
Corey, We use XMLSPY and emacs for XML authoring, and have also tried out Epic and XMetal. I agree with the responses that suggest you look at Epic and XMetal seriously. They seem to be the leaders for full featured commercial products, and are the ones we'd choose for heavy lifting (we're also looking at Frame 7, since we currently use Frame+SGML 6 for SGML editing, but we don't yet have enough experience with FM7 and XML to express an opinion). That said, we have had good success with both XMLSPY and emacs, but we mostly have used them with subsets of DocBook and with other, smaller, DTDs. But, regardless of what you choose, our experience is that the authors need to become familiar with the markup to be effective. You can make it easier by using simplified docbook, rolling your own subset, and setting up the editor properly, but I don't see a way to eliminate the need for authors to know something about the markup. Fortunately, our authors have not had much trouble getting familiar enough to use DocBook effectively, but there is a learning curve (you might look for authors familiar with troff or TeX; after those, XML looks easy:). Dick Hamilton [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Corey Arnold [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 1:49 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook Hi, I am considering using DocBook to create a Manual of Procedures. Ideally I'd like to do so in an environment that is easy for those who are unfamiliar with programming and mark up to understand. Currently I am trying to use XMLSPY. If someone has attempted this before I would very much appreciate input into the feasibility of this plan or if someone can suggest an information resource that would be great too. Thanks, Corey
DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook
Hi, I am considering using DocBook to create a Manual of Procedures. Ideally I'd like to do so in an environment that is easy for those who are unfamiliar with programming and mark up to understand. Currently I am trying to use XMLSPY. If someone has attempted this before I would very much appreciate input into the feasibility of this plan or if someone can suggest an information resource that would be great too. Thanks, Corey
Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook
I've tried to let our authors use XMLSpy, but that didn't work out too great. It's ok for simple things, but for tables formulas documents bigger than let's say 3 chapters of 5 section's each, you're out of luck. Also I found the stylesheets to be not so great, and it was very slow with a document of a reasonable size (50 kb+). If you're willing to spend some money, you're imho better off with Epic (www.arbortext.com) (considering that XmlSpy isn't cheap either...) You can mail me if you have specific questions about XmlSpy DocBook, if you want. cheers, roel Corey Arnold wrote: Hi, I am considering using DocBook to create a Manual of Procedures. Ideally I'd like to do so in an environment that is easy for those who are unfamiliar with programming and mark up to understand. Currently I am trying to use XMLSPY. If someone has attempted this before I would very much appreciate input into the feasibility of this plan or if someone can suggest an information resource that would be great too. Thanks, Corey
Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook
Hi Cory, Try XXE, it's a very powerful and free DocBook editor on JAVA base. Cheers, Tom At 14:49 27.01.03 -0600, Corey Arnold wrote: Hi, I am considering using DocBook to create a Manual of Procedures. Ideally I'd like to do so in an environment that is easy for those who are unfamiliar with programming and mark up to understand. Currently I am trying to use XMLSPY. If someone has attempted this before I would very much appreciate input into the feasibility of this plan or if someone can suggest an information resource that would be great too. Thanks, Corey
Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook
Hi, is jEdit with XML/XSLT plugins suitable for DocBook authoring? I do all of text processing in vi myself, but just wondering for the sake of other users. David
Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook
Corey Arnold ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: I am considering using DocBook to create a Manual of Procedures. Ideally I'd like to do so in an environment that is easy for those who are unfamiliar with programming and mark up to understand. Currently I am trying to use XMLSPY. If someone has attempted this before I would very much appreciate input into the feasibility of this plan or if someone can suggest an information resource that would be great too. And what about epcEdit (www.epcedit.com)? Very capable, multi-platform, non-Java (performance) and the new version will have some very nice goodies. My $0.02 Sincerely, Gour -- Gour [EMAIL PROTECTED] Registered Linux User #278493
Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook
I've used jEdit with the plugins, and it's a decent editor. It can validate on keystroke, and suggests available tags, but I wouldn't recommend it for business authors (those not used to seeing markup). I prefer Arbortext Epic for major edits, but jEdit is great for quick edits. Best regards, --Scott David Tolpin wrote: Hi, is jEdit with XML/XSLT plugins suitable for DocBook authoring? I do all of text processing in vi myself, but just wondering for the sake of other users. David
Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook
On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 02:49:07PM -0600, Corey Arnold wrote: I am considering using DocBook to create a Manual of Procedures. Ideally I'd like to do so in an environment that is easy for those who are unfamiliar with programming and mark up to understand. Currently I am trying to use XMLSPY. If someone has attempted this before I would very much appreciate input into the feasibility of this plan or if someone can suggest an information resource that would be great too. You might also take a look at the Morphon XML-Editor (www.morphon.com), it is cheaper than XML Spy and has a 30-day trial license and comes with a DocBook stylesheet and DTD. -- Bart.
RE: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook
Corey, I've used most of the editors that people have mentioned, including XXE and Morphon. If you can afford them, stick to Epic or Xmetal. Either will serve you well; whereas, the others will lack features that you'll surely need. I currently use Xmetal, mostly because of nasty experiences with earlier versions of Epic. Bill Lawrence Matrix Solutions -Original Message- From: Corey Arnold [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 3:49 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook Hi, I am considering using DocBook to create a Manual of Procedures. Ideally I'd like to do so in an environment that is easy for those who are unfamiliar with programming and mark up to understand. Currently I am trying to use XMLSPY. If someone has attempted this before I would very much appreciate input into the feasibility of this plan or if someone can suggest an information resource that would be great too. Thanks, Corey
Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook
Stefan Drees ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: ... did You actually try it? It's a tcl script using wish and the tksmgl-lib. So performance on my machine linux 2.4 256 MB Mem, PIII-450 was not really that visible, ok for a tcl/tk script. Yes, I'm using it here with Celeron 566 256 RAM. I loaded the DocBook: The Definitive Guide sources and after initial loading, performance was quite OK (the engine of epcEdit is also written in C++). I tested version 1.2.4 by the way, the new one as of today. There are three sample DocBook files as of v4.1.2 included, but there are only 2 views offered: Text and Layout. Here I have all the Views available. - If you enter Text-View, a tip-of-the-day window pops up and asks you to better only use text-view, in case layout-view does not really work (like no template for visualizing etc.) - Layout is a markup-dominated view like ___ __ | \ / | |title A Title between some funny Limiters title| | /\ | --| (In fixed spacing fonts you get the idea) This view is probably not what someone unfamiliar with programming and mark up wants to work in. Well, if you don't like markup, you can simply switch it off, but be assured that if someone wants to author structured (like DocBook) documents, he must have some idea of markup, tags .. Tools like xmlspy offer (in version 5+) on windows plattform so called authentic views on docbook instances that seems to be more adequate for the casual Manual of Procedures user. Multi-platform capability (Win, Linux, Mac OSX) is a definitve plus for me. If you want, you can completely customize stylesheet for every DTD tag to get the more authentic view and the upcoming V2 will have support for CSS stylesheets and Both have a tabular view in which especially tables are quite nice to edit. inline tables as well :-) Sincerely, Gour -- Gour [EMAIL PROTECTED] Registered Linux User #278493
Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook
(My previous post too fast and far too useless, sorry) On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 03:45:50PM +0100 - a wonderful day - Gour wrote: Corey Arnold ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: I am considering using DocBook to create a Manual of Procedures. Ideally I'd like to do so in an environment that is easy for those who are unfamiliar with programming and mark up to understand. Currently I am trying to use XMLSPY. If someone has attempted this before ... Editing the sample DocBook instances in xmlspy (a c++-driven parser/gui if i remember that correctly) makes my w2k governed 800 MHz AMD Duron with 256 MB Memory become very ssslllow. So I guess a 1000 pages Manual of Procedures with a lot of figures and indexes etc. might make the experience of pure content editing in the so called authentic view a bit unsatisfactory. And what about epcEdit (www.epcedit.com)? Hm, ok I tried out of curiosity ... Very capable, multi-platform, non-Java (performance) ... did You actually try it? It's a tcl script using wish and the tksmgl-lib. So performance on my machine linux 2.4 256 MB Mem, PIII-450 was not really that visible, ok for a tcl/tk script. and the new version will have some very nice goodies. I tested version 1.2.4 by the way, the new one as of today. There are three sample DocBook files as of v4.1.2 included, but there are only 2 views offered: Text and Layout. - If you enter Text-View, a tip-of-the-day window pops up and asks you to better only use text-view, in case layout-view does not really work (like no template for visualizing etc.) - Layout is a markup-dominated view like ___ __ | \ / | |title A Title between some funny Limiters title| | /\ | --| (In fixed spacing fonts you get the idea) This view is probably not what someone unfamiliar with programming and mark up wants to work in. Tools like xmlspy offer (in version 5+) on windows plattform so called authentic views on docbook instances that seems to be more adequate for the casual Manual of Procedures user. Both have a tabular view in which especially tables are quite nice to edit. HTH and All the best, s t e f a n. -- Stefan Drees, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fingerprint = 516C C4EF 712A B26F 15C9 C7B7 5651 6964 D508 1B56
Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook
On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 03:45:50PM +0100 - a wonderful day - Gour wrote: Corey Arnold ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: I am considering using DocBook to create a Manual of Procedures. Ideally I'd like to do so in an environment that is easy for those who are unfamiliar with programming and mark up to understand. Currently I am trying to use XMLSPY. If someone has attempted this before I would very much appreciate input into the feasibility of this plan or if someone can suggest an information resource that would be great too. And what about epcEdit (www.epcedit.com)? Very capable, multi-platform, non-Java (performance) and the new version will have some very nice goodies. My $0.02 Sincerely, Gour -- Gour [EMAIL PROTECTED] Registered Linux User #278493 -- All the best, s t e f a n. -- Stefan Drees, [EMAIL PROTECTED], www.sdrees.de, +49 (700) 73733 733. Fingerprint = 516C C4EF 712A B26F 15C9 C7B7 5651 6964 D508 1B56
RE: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook
Also try oXygen (http://www.oxygenxml.com), this application is young, but has loads of potential. I have used it to create a number of manuals. -Original Message- From: Corey Arnold [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 7:49 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: DOCBOOK-APPS: XMLSPY and DocBook Hi, I am considering using DocBook to create a Manual of Procedures. Ideally I'd like to do so in an environment that is easy for those who are unfamiliar with programming and mark up to understand. Currently I am trying to use XMLSPY. If someone has attempted this before I would very much appreciate input into the feasibility of this plan or if someone can suggest an information resource that would be great too. Thanks, Corey
