DOCBOOK: Re: docbook vs latex

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

/ Robert Krüger <krueger@signal7.de> was heard to say:
| - latex is by far more comprehensive and better documented (of course, it's 
| been around much longer)

Perhaps. Have you read http://docbook.org/tdg/en/html/?

| - docbook is simpler and therefore easier to use
| - docbook-xsl is a very flexible mechanism to generate and customize 
| html-output whereas latex2html doesn't seem to be maintained very well
| - docbook has some strange concepts (e.g. xrefs to a section resolving to the 
| "Sexction x.y" instead of just the number, making it unflexible for no real 
| benefit)  

Just as there's no single LaTeX document class that would satisfy all
users, there's no single set of stylesheet parameters that would
satisfy all users. You can certainly make the section references
resolve to just "x.y" if you wish. I'd argue that it's not
'unflexible' at all, on the contrary, it's very flexible. But I'm
baised.

| - working with large documents appears to require more thought and 
| organization with docbook than with latex

There are a few XML "limitations" to consider, otherwise, I'd say that
the amount of thought required is roughly equivalent.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | A man must have grown old and
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | lived long in order to see how
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | short life is.--Schopenhauer