Re: DOCBOOK: Re: On the size of DocBook...

[Dave Pawson <dpawson@nildram.co.uk>]

At 22:14 06/09/2002, Norman Walsh wrote:
>/ Adam Turoff <ziggy@panix.com> was heard to say:
>[...]
>
>Taking things slightly out of order...
>
>| Just for kicks, how difficult would it be to refactor DocBook into
>| a simple core (based on Simplified DocBook, or the moral equivalent),
>| and implement the full DTD as multiple layers of customizations on
>
>Quite. Hard that is. And it would introduce N! different "DocBooks".
>How easy would that be to explain?

I don't see it like that Norm.
I learn the basics (simplified). Then I need X layer/customisation,
so I have to learn some percentage of an additional layer of tags,
in which I must have interest, else I wouldn't bother?
   You don't eat the chocolate cake whole, you do it in bytes :-)


>Would the learning curve for DocBook Core + DocBook Dublin Core +
>DocBook Unix really have a significantly gentler slope?

Yes, because its likely to be done over time. 
  I want to see it working at first (I don't believe it), so I 
keep to simplified. ONly when my confidence grows do I chance
using XML tagger 'chunk'. Then, later, I need some OO markup or whatever.
By now I know how to 'add' a chunk, and my confidence has grown again.
Its in the head, not the tools.



>Aren't the
>really hard issues editorial? Learning how to do structured authoring
>is hard. I suggest that it's possible that learning how to do
>structured authoring with a big DTD is only incrementally more
>difficult than learning how to do it with a small DTD.

Seperable, IMO. its a mindset thing, hard with ten tags, another
layer of difficulty if faced with 100? 

Regards DaveP