RE: DOCBOOK: docbook vs latex

[Peter Ring <pri@magnus.dk>]

Some non-mathematical applications with highly specific rendering
expectations:
 - music
 - chemistry

Somewhat mathematical applications with slightly less specific rendering
expections:
 - data and system modelling, UML
 - semantic networks, conceptual graphs
 - graph theory

One might 'naturally' want to describe graph structures, e.g. dependecies
between system components, in DocBook. This can be done as prose and will
probably be inaccurate and out-of-date most of the time. Or it could be done
concisely in e.g. UML and then 'dumped' as an opaque blob into a DocBook
document, with no links whatsoever except for the position in the text flow,
which is also a shame.

Refering to Knuth again, can DocBook be used -- as a literate programming
environment -- to author say, .spec files, configuration files, installation
script, test scripts etc., the kind of things that we use to maintain our
computerized environment? I mean without cheating, using only the
information and structures available in a DocBook document intended for
human consumption?

Kind regards,
Peter Ring


-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Smith [mailto:smith@xml-doc.org]
Sent: 3. september 2002 13:13
To: docbook@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: DOCBOOK: docbook vs latex


<snip />

Another thing: math markup seem unique in that it has specific and
unique processing expectations/ rendering requirements associated with
it. I don't think most other kinds of discipline-specific markup have
such specific processing expectations associated with them.

  --Mike