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Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] Docbook toolchain tips


I've been going down a similar road with my company. As in your case,
I think reuse and single-source were the most compelling arguments, even 
though I'm careful not to oversell these buzzwords. I had less luck with 
some of the other best-practices arguments.

Since you asked about an editor, I suggest you check out XML Mind. It's 
powerful, completely standards-based, does DocBook out of the box, and 
is well-supported. IMHO, it compares favorably with Arbortext Epic
(which I've used for years). We use it on Linux and Windows.

In fact, as we start to implement it seems to me that people seem to 
appreciate working with a good XML editor, as compared to working with 
DTP tools or HTML editors. Yes, there's a learning curve, and XML Mind 
is not exactly WYSYWIG, but it really does hide the tagging, and 
validation on the fly pretty much eliminates coding errors.


Luciano Scavizzi wrote:
> I am pushing my company to adopt Docbook as a "documentation
> standard", but, of course, my (questionable) personal charme is not a
> point good enough  to convince my colleagues and our senior
> management.
> 
> As speaking of semantics precision and separation of content from
> format is not that a involving subject, the basic point I am making
> out is the advantage of single-source documents.
> 
> On the other hand, I usually write my XML docs with a plain text
> editor, I do not think many employees of ours are confident with
> markup languages and would switch happily from MS Word to inputing
> tagged text in an editor. I wonder if you can suggest some esy-to-use
> authoring tool (I've already tried Sydoc) for Win32.
> 
> Furthermore, as a FO formatter, I am realizing FOP, while being more
> than enough form my personal use, is far from flawless.
> I have tested XSL Formatter and XEP, and I must say I like very much
> the former for its speed and its neat output (I also understood it has
> a very good standard compliance). I have also found on the web many
> more tools I haven't tested yet, and I could not find any
> comprehensive fo-support comparison chart, but one at
> http://www.antennahouse.com/xslfo/comparison-fo.htm. Which of the
> processors around are worth a try in your opinion?
> My minimum requirements are good SVG support and a "predictable"
> behavior (i.e. adhere quite strictly to w3c recommendations).
> 
> Thanks,
> Luciano
> 
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