Re: [seul-edu] Our math discussion - Docs

[Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com>]

At 12:09 PM 7/23/00 -0700, lp wrote:
...
>Text is definitely the easiest to work with. I expect that most of the 
>document could be created using text. However, I anticipate that we 
>will need some way for the participants to communicate math expressions
>-
>that was the only reason I suggested latex/latex2html for the working
>drafts.

I guess I'm not clear, then, on the scope of the comtemplated project. If it
is primarily a description of available resources ... the online equivalent
of an annotated bibliography ... I suspect straight text would serve just
fine. If it is more akin to an actual math text, we would, naturally, need
the online (and hard-copy, for, say, Postscript) equivalent of sophisticated
typesetting. So which is it?

In weighing the tradeoffs, we might want to consider the extent to which
DocBook and similar formats, which demand that content authors double as
typesetters, serve as barriers to partitipation. On another list, about 6
weeks ago, I was involved in the very active, enthusiastic start of a
substantial documentation project. After I and one co-author has written our
(fairly substantial) parts of a first draft, the discussion turned to use of
LinuxDoc or DocBook, switching from ordinary text editors to Xemacs of LyX,
management of the document in CVS, and related procedural stuff. Substantive
work ground to a halt, and it's never really recovered.

In looking at the site for SEUL/edu documents
(http://www.seul.org/edu/docs/docprojects.html), I note that the only ones
that have been made are the set Bill wrote about how to make documents in
DocBook. Perhaps Doug or Bill has some insights into why the other proposed
guides have not even acquired project leaders, let alone draft text? 

Is it just that nobody has both the needed time and the expertise to do the
work, or are prospective authors being held back by some procedural
component? Or is something else going on? Or am I simply looking in the
wrong place?

I'm not trying to nag here, but I do hope we can use the list's experience
better to understand why some sorts of projects move ahead while others do
not. My own thoughts here come mainly from my own experience, which is
basically a dislike of trying to mix writing and typesetting, plus seeing
"modern" Linux typesetting tools as extraordinarily primitive compared to
what (say) Pagemaker on a Mac could do a decade ago. I want to *write*
documents, not *program* them.

But that's just me ... I'd really like a better sense of why others are
(seemingly) reluctant to take on significant documentation projects. I
already know (and now you do too) why *I* am reluctant to do so.



--
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski                                        -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA           	 	         ray@comarre.com        
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