Re: [docbook] DocBook and Publishing Software

[David White <davidw@kencook.com>]

Thanks to everyone for the responses..

You make some good points, I am new to this industry so I have allot to 
learn yet about the tools of the trade.

I do know that we have been using framemaker for quite some time and are 
just now moving to structured frame
and to XML.

Within the next few weeks we will be experimenting with XSL-FO and 
publishing to PDF.

Different clients of ours have different needs.  They all want different 
media (PDF/FM files/XML).

Arbortext looks like a nice solution (although the pricing might be too 
much as of yet), I have read into OpenOffice and InDesign both of which 
seem to be lacking features that we may not want to loose yet.

The "golden egg" goal is to fully utilize our Sibersafe CMS server and 
have our entire DTP department work natively in XML with as little pain 
as possible.

Thanks for the great responses! And please forgive my newbieness! :-)

Michael Smith wrote:

>David White <davidw@kencook.com> writes:
>
>  
>
>>The company I work for is making decisions about its plans for future 
>>docbook publishing and the current situation that Framemaker is in.  
>>Given that Frame may not survive,
>>    
>>
>
>What makes you think Frame may not survive? Have there been rumors
>about Adobe end-of-lifing it or something? It's still a really
>powerful program and hard to imagine (for me at least) that's
>it's not going to continue to be around for a long time to come.
>
>I think one thing that's limiting Frame now is that you still need
>a MIF parser to work with it. It wouldn't be to big leap for them
>to move to replacing MIF with an XML-based vocabulary. Similar to
>the OpenOffice XML format or WordML. Then we could work with Frame
>files using whatever XML parser or XSLT engine we wanted.
>
>  
>
>>and that docbook / XML is the format of choice for our
>>publishing needs.  What are your opinions on software solutions
>>for a publishing department?  Granted the department has
>>individuals of different roles such as writers and editors etc.
>>
>>The tools I have seen are two fold: WYSWYG publishing (ala frame) via 
>>Adobe InDesign (which I hear isn't ready yet to replace Quark or Frame 
>>yet, dont know its DocBook abilities at all).
>>    
>>
>
>It doesn't make much sense to look for publishing tools with
>specific support for DocBook. The DocBook XSL stylesheets
>generates standards-compliant XSL-FO output. So I think maybe you
>ought to be looking instead for tools that can work with XSL-FO.
>
>  --Mike
>  
>


-- 

David White

Web Application Developer

Ken Cook Company

9929 West Silver Spring Drive

Milwaukee, WI  53225

414-466-6060 (voice)

414-466-0840 (fax)