Re: [docbook-apps] docbook 4.5 install. Woefully hard?

[Markus Hoenicka <markus.hoenicka@mhoenicka.de>]

Quoting Dave Pawson <davep@dpawson.co.uk>:

> I'm not best to judge that. I've not had much success with it
> since it changed from a 'complete' installation.
> Nor am I sure Windows users would appreciate changing 'environment'
> or installing such a big item?
>

This is definitely a point to think about for many. My Cygwin  
installation at work weighs in at 1GB, but it contains the cruft of  
several years. A fresh bare-bones installation is a lot slimmer than  
that.


> 1) A suggested location (or even a 'base') for those without admin rights

This would be ~/bin on Unixish systems, wouldn't it?

> 2) Batch/script files to run them for docbook
> 3) Optional: a make file or ant script

These would certainly fill a void. There is no reason why everyone has  
to invent his own scripts and makefiles. Modding existing ones would  
make it a lot easier to get started.

> 4) A partial catalog file  to start things off
> 5) A catalog.manager file
>

This is why I'd advocate to use packaging systems, if at all possible.  
Every self-respecting distro (including Cygwin) uses a tool like  
xmlcatalog to manage XML and SGML catalogs whenever a relevant package  
is added or removed. It should simply not be necessary for an author  
writing DocBook documents to fiddle with these.

regards,
Markus

-- 
Markus Hoenicka
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