[seul-edu] DTP standards

[Douglas Loss <dloss@suscom.net>]

On Sun, 03 Sep 2000, Ray Olszewski wrote:

> Doug -- I don't want to get caught up in a contentious debate
> here. But I do
> want us to think carefully about whether a standard
> constitutes an important
> requirement or an unneeded barrier. 
> 
Nor do I.  But I do think that a standard for documentation,
whatever it is, is an important requirement.  Take a look at the
LDP submission requirements for an example of what I mean.

> In this case, the project we are discussing will, as far as I
> can tell, be
> the FIRST substantive output of the "guide" project -- at
> least the URL for
> guides, http://www.seul.org/edu/docs/docprojects.html, appears
> to contain
> only a "wish list" of titles without associated authors, plus
> a single set
> of existing guides, the ones about how to use DocBook (not
> surprising that
> the author of that set is willing to use DocBook, right?). 
> 
Actually, L Prevett's Math Teacher's Guide is in preparation and
predates the School Networking guide by a few weeks.  It's not
yet available though, so which one comes out first is still an
open question.

> Since the guides project is, as I recall, about a year old,
> using this
> opportunity to reconsider its standards seems to me like a
> natural
> consequence of the fact that there has been no rush of
> volunteers for the
> project.
> 
I have ho problems with reconsidering the standard.  It's just
that Bill and Ramin did a good deal of work to come up with what
we have and I didn't want to se it overturned on a whim.

> I was certainly suggesting my own dislike of it,
> along with my suspicion that we will have better luck
> recruiting other
> volunteer writers if they are permitted to concentrate on
> writing, not
> desktop publishing. 
> 
Well, DocBook isn't desktop publishing, in that any SGML markup
is decidedly _not_ presentation-specific.  It's more semantic
markup that can be converted into valid presentation formats
(LaTeX, HTML, PostScript, etc.) via the appropriate convertors.

-- 
Doug Loss           The art of medicine consists of amusing the
dloss@suscom.net    patient while nature cures the disease.
(570) 326-3987             Voltaire