Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Re: DocBook with AbiWord?

[Jose Abilio Oliveira Matos <jamatos@novalis.fc.up.pt>]

On Thu, Jan 10, 2002 at 04:20:04PM -0500, Norman Walsh wrote:
> 
> At can be ameliorated by technology, though. If you had a sufficiently
> configurable structured editor, you could make a fairly intuitive
> DocBook editor out of it by configuring it to "do the right DocBook
> thing" everywhere a word processor user expects it to "do the right
> thing".

  Something like what we are trying to do with LyX. I don't claim to
be there, notice. ;-)
  Ok, being realistic we are in the first step of one thousand miles
journey. ;-)

  We still miss a general, a generic inline element, and to deal with
attributes besides some of the usual ones.

  The objective is to support all the Simplified Docbook in a native
way.

  LyX is used by some HOWTOs authors and for personal documentation.
  
  I know by experience all the problems that Daniel e Norman mention
but I expect a different reaction from people that is using LyX since
our paradigm is called WYSIWYM "What You See Is What You Mean".

  The main emphasis of LyX is latex, and there we try to encourage a
separation between content and presentation. Although we have the font
attributes like italic and bold we invite our users to use emphasis
that can later be defined as you like better, and so on...

> If the user clicks "bold" when they're between two paras, add the para...
> 
> If the user marks a para and clicks "numbered list", wrap an orderedlist
> and a listitem around the para.
> 
> etc. etc. etc.

  It is this what LyX docbook mode tries to do. Something that is
missing is documentation to explain some of the ways as this is done.

  I use it with a small filter to produce website/XML (still version
1, no time to migrate to version 2) to generate my website. I find
this easier than to use emacs (that rules btw ;-) with psgml.
http://www.fep.up.pt/docentes/jamatos (sorry it is in Portuguese) :-)

  LyX-docbook was derived from the previous support for linuxdoc,
that is a lot closer from latex :-) has lots of points that be can
improved. Yet for those who want a simple way to edit docbook I invite
you to try it.

  I have been following this list since 1999 and I didn't yet announce
this as I know that there is lots of work to be done. If anyone has any
suggestion related with LyX-docbook both here privately or in the LyX
mailing list.

  I take this chance to thank Daniel and Norman for the excellent work
which you provide to us. It really helps me. Thank you guys. :-)

>                                         Be seeing you,
>                                           norm
> 
> -- 
> Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | Everything the same; everything
> http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | distinct.
> Chair, DocBook Technical Committee |

-- 
José Abílio