Docbook is a standard for writing books, articles, technical
documentations. It is the format used by LDP ( linux doc project ) and
many ( or most ) open source projects, companies, etc. ( it's not a new
thing, has been around since SGML days ).
XSLT is the W3C standard for XML transformation.
You can use any other format for writing documents - including Word ( I
understand the latest version generates XML ), and you can use anything to
transform the XML into HTML - including VB macros.
It's just sad when an organization like Apache chooses to ignore existing
standards and invent it's own DTD and transformation language to do the
site.
Well, that's my opinion - if I'm going to write documents I'll use docbook
or HTML, and I'm -1 on asking people to learn an ad-hoc DTD when there is
a standard.
Of course, it's apache decision for what format it wants to use for it's
site - and tomcat-dev commiters can vote on using any arbitrary DTD for
its documentation ( including word or staroffice ) - it's a majority
decision.
As long as there is no vote - I think the right thing is to stick with
what is in use at this moment. That is html for tomcat3.x documentations.
If tomcat4 commiters decide to use a special xml format - that's fine with
me. ( well, I think that should be voted by all
tomcat-dev commiters, and if the vote is to use some xml format it should
apply to all tomcat versions and sub-projects ).
I'm waiting for the proposal to switch - my vote will be -1 for any xml
format except docbook, but it's just one vote. Or the PMC/ASF can decide
to use a certain format for all projects - that's fine with me too.
As Geir mentioned, that has been discussed in the past - and I don't think
it's worth continuing. There are standards, and we can ignore
them - arguments about the value of a standard are available in many
places, no need to repeat here.
Costin
