DOCBOOK: Re: linuxdoc to docbook migration

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

/ Douglas du Boulay <ddb@R3401.rlem.titech.ac.jp> was heard to say:
| (1) The control file for the program caters for a huge variety of
| alternative behaviour. A very large number of default options
| are built into the program and these often have a redundant "command argument" 
| which forces the required behaviour. In the original linuxdoc document I used 
| the <sf> serif font tag to identify such default command arguments. 
| I am hoping there will be a more apropriate docbook alternative to highlight
| user commands which are defaults.

Can you provide a little more context? I'm not sure what sort of
commands you mean.

| (2) (i) to get html superscripts and subscripts for both footnotes, table

For footnotes, you should switch to the <footnote> element that will provide
the marks for you automatically.

|         footnotes (e.g. [<sup>1</sup>]) and mathematical notation
|          (e.g. [F<sup>2<sup>]), I abused the linuxdoc.dtd <f></f> notation.  
|          (remapped as [])

For mathematics, it's a little harder. If all you need are sub and
superscripts, you can use subscript and superscript.

|     (ii) I also had to abuse the  [] notation to get greek symbols in 
|         the body of the text e.g. [&alpha;] .

I'm not sure what you mean by [] notation.

| a standard way to simplify it greatly using entity references, because something
| like F^2 =  [F<sup>2<sup>] is probably used more than 100 times.

Sure, you can use entities.

<!ENTITY F2 "F<superscript>2</superscript">

&F2;

| Also I read someplace (the w3c MathML site) that there may be some free 
| software for authoring equations which could be cut and paste into documents.
| Any recommendations?

No, because I haven't seen any widely available MathML rendering tools.

| P.S. If it helps to see where I am coming from, the original 
| bastardized HTML-ised linuxdoc.dtd version can be seen here:
| http://xtal.crystal.uwa.edu.au/man/xtal3.7.html

Ah. Yes. There is a lot of math. Hmm...historically, DocBook hasn't
allowed text for math (we were waiting for someone to standardize math
markup :-). But a lot of your equations appear to be greek letters,
sub and superscripts, and a few other symbols. No reason why that
couldn't be text. This adds weight to the argument in favor of adding
text as an alternative in inline equations and equations.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | Be indiscrete. Do it continuously.
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | 
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee |