Re: [docbook] First Attempt at Writing a Manual Not Going Well

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

At 10:47 17/04/2003 -0700, Brian M. Sutin wrote:

>Boggle #1:
>
>     When I actually try to sit down and write, I find myself
>     spending vastly more time paging throught the (relatively
>     incomprehensible) manual from O'Reilly that I do actually
>     entering information.

Yes, OK. That will pass. As time goes by you'll need to refer
to the texts less and less.

>Boggle #2:
>
>     DocBook appears to be something which grew, rather than
>     something which was designed.

Just my opinion. It grew, but controlled by a clever bunch of people
who knew what they were doing and responding to customer input.


>Boggle #3:
>
>     I would think that the importance of a piece of information
>     would be part of DTD, and not part of the style sheets.

use the role attribute for those kind of things. then provide
a customisation which is good for you only, in the stylesheet
to say how you want important styling.
   Or use one of the semantic tags already there. You'll find em.

Steep learning curve I agree.
But lots of us have kept faith. Why?
Its good. Its complete. Its kept up to date. Response is
3 orders faster than most commercial products IMO.

Try it. I doubt you'll be disappointed.
Just don't give up too soon?

HTH DaveP