Re: DOCBOOK: DocBook vs OpenOffice.org

[Mark Johnson <mrj@debian.org>]

On Saturday, March 1, Florian Brunner wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm new to DocBook. As far as I know there is a DocBook version
> based on XML. I know OpenOffice.org a little bit which is based on
> XML, too, and thus can be transformed to many other formats. 

> Can you tell me what would be the advantages of using DocBook
> instead of OpenOffice.org?

Hi Florian,

There's an OpenOffice sub-project to provide DocBook Filters so that
you can save your files as DocBook XML, thereby using OpenOffice as a DocBook
editor. Presumably, you then get the benefits of both.

I'm not sure how far the project has progressed, but you can get & test the
latest version of the filter available at

  http://xml.openoffice.org/xmerge/docbook/

> For what task would you suggest the one and for what the other?

OpenOffice is an MSOffice-like integrated desktop application
suite. It has a word processor, spreadsheet, drawing, & presentation
tools.

A DocBook file, OTOH, has no preferred presentation, it's simply a
bunch of text surrounded by XML tags. It's used mainly to write
computer-related documentation and is processed into some output format in a
separate procedure.

> And is there a WYSIWYG-editor that uses DocBook as its file format?

See the OpenOffice filter I mentioned above, plus there are a number of both
free and commercial editors that'd work for DocBook. I only use GNU Emacs,
so my knowledge of other tools is quite limited.

You might want to checkout the 'DocBook Tools' section of the DocBook wiki:

 http://www.docbook.org/wiki/moin.cgi/DocBookTools

Good luck!

Cheers,
Mark
-- 
_____________________________________
Mark Johnson        <mark@dulug.duke.edu>
Debian XML/SGML     <mrj@debian.org>
Home Page:          <http://dulug.duke.edu/~mark/>
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