Re: XML vs DocBooks

[Doug Loss <dloss@csrlink.net>]

Bill Tihen -- TECHNOLOGY wrote:

> I have heard from a parent of a student that xml would
> be the way to go, but I don't know anything about it and
> it seems that there are already well established doc
> methods in the linux community (DocBooks is one of them)
> and it does everything we need now. DocBooks seems
> simple and we already have some in that format).
> However, since we are just getting started we could of
> course change our minds and use xml instead of docbooks.
>
> Oppinions?  I asked for oppions before, but I didn't get
> any answers so I assumed that was quiet support of
> DocBooks.

XML is definitely useful, but for something like this DocBooks is what
you want.  DocBooks is an SGML DTD that you can use with sgmltools to
produce HTML, ASCII, TeX, PostScript, and undoubtedly some other
formats I can't remember just now.  You can maintain the base document
in DocBook format and generate the various versions with sgmltools; it
makes keeping all the versions synchronized a breeze.  As Bill said,
there should be a way of generating XML from DocBooks too.

--
Doug Loss            Always acknowledge a fault.  This will throw
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