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Subject: Re: [chairs] Re: Publication templates
Three points in response to this thread. 1. People asking for a native OASIS XML authoring and production environment are apparently unaware that an OASIS DocBook environment has been in place for several years. The UBL TC (which has a far larger deliverable than most other OASIS TCs) has been using DocBook as its primary authoring format since 2006. If the wind is blowing in the right direction and our release is installed correctly, you can even view our DocBook source directly in a web browser, as long as it's IE. I see that Ken Holman (bless him for all the work he's done that you guys are apparently completely ignorant of) has pointed to the current version. You want XML authoring? Use it. 2. Several people in this discussion appear to believe that you can create an abstract formatting specification and then make a set of tools that will produce identically formatted renditions according to this spec in PDF, Word, OpenOffice, HTML, and whatever other publishing format you like. After 30 years spent wrestling with this problem (I guess that part is generational, isn't it?), I won't tell you that it's impossible even in theory to do this, I'll just request that when you've successfully created this solution, you'll let the rest of the publishing world know. Don't forget the free XML-to-PDF formatter (you could base it on xmlroff; that would be nice), and do make sure that the complete set of standard H&J dictionaries and footnoting algorithms required to make this happen has also been officially codified and is freely available to all of us. 3. The physical impossibility of actually getting what some people seem to want aside, if you need a specification for formatting OASIS documents, OASIS happens to have a mechanism already set up for creating stuff like that. It's called a Technical Committee. I'll believe that the people clamoring for a formatting spec really want one when they sit down and create it. Jon
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