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Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] DocBook editor


Lou Iorio wrote:
> 
> It also seems to me a bad idea to try to use a WYSIWYG editor for any 
> markup language. 

It's a bad idea to use general purpose tools for something restrictive 
like DocBook, but it doesn't mean you can't make tools that do work 
well.  Take a look at LyX: http://www.lyx.org/

It works almost like a word processor, except that because it is a GUI 
for LaTeX, it restricts you to only formatting that makes sense in 
LaTeX.  The problem with modern word processors is that they have the 
ability to make completely free-form documents, which goes against the 
DocBook Way.  But when you write something like LyX, which has a strict 
underlying data model, it changes the UI in ways so it can't work 
exactly like a word processor.

I suspect it's a lot easier to write such a tool than a word processor 
or HTML editor, because the restrictions in DocBook rule out entire 
classes of formatting you don't have to worry about.  The only reason 
there are more word processors and HTML editors than DocBook editors is 
due to the relative size of the markets for those tools.

> That's not to say there are not good editors for DocBook. I use Eclipse 
> <http://www.eclipse.org/>; the current version has
> great support for DocBook. 

I don't know that I'd call it "great".  "Useful" at best.  I was unable 
to get it to cope with my ".dbx" files.  Until I renamed them to use 
.xml extensions, it didn't know what it do with them.  That, coupled 
with Eclipse's tunnel vision regarding workspaces, I don't think I could 
recommend it as a general-purpose DocBook editor.

If you already have a project in Eclipse and the DocBook file is part of 
that project, I'm sure it works fine.


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