Simply viewing DB

[rob <ralarson@pacific.net>]

I came across a piece of free software documentation (and glad to  
find any documentation at all besides source code!) that from the  
file extension is SGML and from content of the first line is  
apparently a DocBook document.  I tended to go cross-eyed, however,  
when I tried to (human-) read the d___ thing.  Firefox shows a giant,  
undifferentiated and still partially marked-up blob of text.

Is there a simple way to view even a crudely formatted version of  
such a document without becoming a docbook weenie, learning new  
languages, installing 'tool chains' and 'envirionments', etc.?  If it  
happened to involve using an editor application, I could ignore that  
bit, as long as it is quick to download [on dialup :-(  ] and SIMPLE  
to install.

I spent a good portion of last evening fruitlessly skimming over  
reams of DB FAQs, beginners' guides and tutorials, searching for  
'DocBook viewer', etc., and for what it's worth, it seems to me that  
the DB community is doing a great deal of inward navel-gazing.

This whole thing seems to be a sort of 'meta-document' movement  
that's in danger of losing perspective about what ought to be the  
ultimate goal of any documentation project: to inform people.  Has it  
occurred to anyone that DocBook files might fall into end-users'  
laps?  Could it be a useful format in its own right?  We don't expect  
users of other formats to become developers, installing preprocessors  
for our .rtf or .pdf or whatever files.  We fire up a widely  
available application, and we JUST VIEW THEM.

Bit of a flame, eh?  Oh well...

-Mrnatural