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

[Carlos Araya <carlos@cvc.edu>]

<snip/> 
> DocBook is so thoroughly documented, in the reference section of TDG, that
> 99% of the time, it concisely provides *exactly* what you need to know.  I
> claim that, working that way, a newbie can be 90% up the learning curve, in
> an afternoon, so long as you already have all your tools setup properly.

When you're starting to use Docbook, and speaking from experience, Docbook
is one of the most daunting applications to learn. It's not whether it's
well documented or not (where I agree with you) but the sheer volume of
things, by the time you decide you want to use a subset you've managed to
get throroughly confused.

I guess it would be helpful if there was an application for XML/Docbook
where you'd have all the allowed tags offered to you, either in a menu or in
an XML comment tag or something like that.

And you talk about the tools, well that's another bottleneck. The tools
assume a technical level that most beginers don't have (even if they've
worked installing software before.) A couple days ago I asked about an RPM
for Passivetex and even then I'm having a hell of time trying to find if I
have the correct versions of required software, for people who might not be
technically proficient this is a big drawback to Docbook and similar tools

> 
> BTW, I especially like that the refentrys, in TDG, have "processing
> expectations", "See Also", an alphabetized list of the children, a list of
> an element's parents, and often even examples.
Again, they presume that you know what you're looking for. Now I can look
into the references and find out what I want in a couple seconds but when I
started, it used to take me at least 10 minutes to find what I was looking
for

As a summary, let's not forget that there are people out there using Docbook
who use it only because the tools where already installed on their system
and that documentation can be a two-edged sword

Carlos

-- 
Carlos E. Araya
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