OASIS Mailing List ArchivesView the OASIS mailing list archive below
or browse/search using MarkMail.

 


Help: OASIS Mailing Lists Help | MarkMail Help

docbook message

[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [Elist Home]


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


[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [Elist Home]


Powered by eList eXpress LLC