Re: [docbook-apps] DocBook editor

[Lou Iorio <lou@louiorio.com>]

On Jan 29, 2008, at 1:45 PM, Warren Young wrote:

> Lou Iorio wrote:
>> It also seems to me a bad idea to try to use a WYSIWYG editor for  
>> any markup language.
>
> It's a bad idea to use general purpose tools for something  
> restrictive like DocBook, but it doesn't mean you can't make tools  
> that do work well.  Take a look at LyX: http://www.lyx.org/

I will definitely take a look at lyx.
>
> It works almost like a word processor, except that because it is a  
> GUI for LaTeX, it restricts you to only formatting that makes sense  
> in LaTeX.  The problem with modern word processors is that they  
> have the ability to make completely free-form documents, which goes  
> against the DocBook Way.  But when you write something like LyX,  
> which has a strict underlying data model, it changes the UI in ways  
> so it can't work exactly like a word processor.
>
> I suspect it's a lot easier to write such a tool than a word  
> processor or HTML editor, because the restrictions in DocBook rule  
> out entire classes of formatting you don't have to worry about.   
> The only reason there are more word processors and HTML editors  
> than DocBook editors is due to the relative size of the markets for  
> those tools.
>
>> That's not to say there are not good editors for DocBook. I use  
>> Eclipse <http://www.eclipse.org/>; the current version has
>> great support for DocBook.
>
> I don't know that I'd call it "great".  "Useful" at best.  I was  
> unable to get it to cope with my ".dbx" files.  Until I renamed  
> them to use .xml extensions, it didn't know what it do with them.

Go to Preferences->Editors->File Associations and add *.dbk. with the  
same associated editors as *.xml.
I think there's one more Preferences setting to deal with, but I  
don't remember what it is.


> That, coupled with Eclipse's tunnel vision regarding workspaces, I  
> don't think I could recommend it as a general-purpose DocBook editor.

I don't use or understand workspaces or projects in Eclipse: I just  
use it to edit individual files.
I recommend Eclipse as a general-purpose DocBook Editor.

>
> If you already have a project in Eclipse and the DocBook file is  
> part of that project, I'm sure it works fine.
>
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