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Subject: DOCBOOK-APPS: RE: AW: DOCBOOK: docbook suitable for book - creation ?
Hi Kevin. It took me about a week to learn to use Quark Express and I suppose the same would have been true for Framemaker. A week for me as a student writing my diploma thesis certainly means more than 40 hours. And no money for that :-( This would not make me an expert, but ceratainly enable me to produce something nice (our student paper in the case of Quark). Concerning DocBook: My personal opinion is, that you can create a document in different formats very quickly, provided you have a good tutorial like the one from sagehill.net. The quality will be sufficient for open source projects, but noting I would expect a customer to acceppt and pay big bucks for. And my prof. is expecting us to improve it. A big problem is that FOP is still such an early version. I adapt my style and can transform my documents. Then I get a large document from a friend and FOP starts and ends at page 10 with 'null'. I then call him and ask him his borders and it turns out that he has a left margin of 3cm and I of 4. After changing that I can do the transformation but the idea was that all documents look alike. Now I am trying to get him to remove some footnotes, which he uses in great numbers, which will lessen this problem. So, is it perfect? No. Certainly not. Do I prefer it to MS Word? Personally, yes I do. But I could not persuade my girl friend yet to switch too, because it lacks ease of use. Stephan > -----Original Message----- > From: KMcLauchlan [mailto:kevinmcl@magma.ca] > Sent: Sonntag, 17. November 2002 20:03 > To: docbook@lists.oasis-open.org > Subject: Re: AW: DOCBOOK: docbook suitable for book - creation ? > > > On Sun, 17 Nov 2002 20:33:25 +0100 > "Stephan Wiesner" <stephan@stephan-wiesner.de> wrote: > > > Framemaker can import DocBook. So you could write it in > DocBook and do > > the final layout with that. You would probably need a week to learn > > how to use Framemaker, though. Just another idea we were playing > > around with. > > I'm curious... > > When somebody suggests that it would take "a week > to learn" FrameMaker, LaTex, DocBook... whatever, > do they usually mean: > > a) a week of 8-hour workdays (i.e., actually five > or six working days) while spending the majority > of your time doing other stuff, like > -- your research > -- your job, for which your employer is actually > paying you? > > b) a week of 8-hour workdays, in which you spend > every minute of that 40+ hours reading and trying > and re-trying to get (whichever) software to do > what you need it to do? > > c) a "week" of 24-hour days (168 hours), perhaps > actually interspersed with "a life", and therefore > taking a tad longer in sidereal time? > > I feel like a real dummy, that it took me several > weeks to learn FrameMaker, although I was producing > useful documents with it within a couple of days > of starting my job. It was only as I had more time > with it, and more interaction (mailing list) with > advanced users that I learned how badly I'd done > the first few docs, and how much re-work was > needed so that they would be smoothly and efficiently > repeatable, expandable, re-usable in future. > > That's not to say that the first docs were ugly > to look at, in final form, but the hidden stuff > was not something I'd want to see today. > > Every time I turn around, somebody is making > different claims for DocBook (and whether the > pure-and-godly way to do it is DSSSL or XSL, > or... whatever the other choices are). One > minute I'me hearing that I could fire up > OpenJade and have finished product in half > an hour, and the next minute, I'm being told > that... well, no, actually, that would only > give me an output file that I'd then have > to bring into some other system to produce > actual human-usable printouts, or cross- > referenced and hot-linked PDFs, etc. > > One minute, its the perfect solution for > the single, busy writer in a small company, > and the next it's "oh no, I wouldn't take > that on unless I had a department of people, > including one or two who could dedicate > themselves full-time to DTD creation..." > > So, what's the poop? If I am producing quite > acceptable and timely output in (say) Frame, > BUT am moving to a platform where Frame is not > available, yet still need to produce docs that > are laid out to the company/marketing-dept. standards, > AND keep meeting deadlines that are getting closer > and closer together every month... is DocBook > (and OpenJade, or fill-in-your-favorite-solution) > the ideal solution for me? > > /kevin >
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