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Subject: Re: DOCBOOK: Re: A straw proposal for help topics in DocBook
Comments inline, below. At 06:48 AM 19/10/2001 -0400, Norman Walsh wrote: >/ Bob Stayton <bobs@caldera.com> was heard to say: >| I think Karl's point is that before new elements are added >| to Docbook, that someone should convince the skeptics that the Skeptics: perhaps to some it is more an issue of resource and time utilization. It's a sticky issue because we are not working with conventional economic constraints or priorities, i.e., this is voluntary work by and large. So the concern might be expressed thus: should time be spent on new, perhaps questionable, perhaps highly intrusive and complex design and development work OR should time be spent on ensuring / improving the various documentation and support foundations of the current environment. It's a hard question in the light of, say, promoting and evangelizing DocBook because both alternatives have potential for wining new users. The first, the online, hypertext authoring community; the second, the less than inveterate (but potentially advocacy useful) user community, e.g., generic business consultants & analysts, project mangers. >| legitimate needs for generating help output cannot be met >| using existing elements, role attributes, and stylesheets. > >Well, it all depends on how tightly you want to define "cannot be >met". This is a slippery slope, DocBook doesn't really "need" all >those inlines, for example, everything could be done with <phrase> >and some attributes. :-) Perhaps it's the old trade off between "richness" and "complexity". These qualities lie on a continuum and are in the eyes of the beholder, dependent on level, type and duration of experience with the packages. The new Guide and additional well organized, web-based support material would move the centre of gravity of this continuum further toward "rich" and away from "complex". This is a good thing. ><snip> > >We could say, "it's technically possible, they oughta learn how to do >it 'our way'", but I'm reluctant to do that without at least >considering other options. Yes. Particularly when the impetus to change may be intrinsic to the person rather than extrinsic from the organization he or she is working for. Regards. ...edN
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