OASIS Mailing List ArchivesView the OASIS mailing list archive below
or browse/search using MarkMail.

 


Help: OASIS Mailing Lists Help | MarkMail Help

regrep message

[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]


Subject: Re: [regrep] Format for our documents



Remember the VI Vs. Emacs wars? Editors can be a religious issue.

Like you, I want to make sure this is a friendly debate and that we dont 
get upset over little things.


Matthew MacKenzie wrote:

> The OpenOffice format will likely embed all of the style information 
> leaving the XML as a bunch of goop.  But hey...we can open it in Notepad. 

Nothing in open office is embedded or hidden - that is why it is called 
*OPEN* Office. It is all XML, pure and simple.

>
>
> DocBook is my suggestion, and I'll point out that many technical books 
> are written in DocBook.  Those authors manage. 

<joke>
As my mother used to say when I used the justification "But my best 
friend does X all the time":

    If he jumps in the well should you jump in the well too? :-)
</joke>

Personally, I do not want to "manage". I want an editing tool that is 
effortless and reliable and lets me focus on the task at hand.

>
>
> I don't want to argue this, just please take my suggestion (or leave 
> it).  The virtues of DocBook are well documented.  A well structured 
> document source tree, as evidenced in Norm Walsh's Docbook: The 
> Definitive Guide actually reduces document complexity. 

Since Norm is my close colleague I will ask his opinion on the subject.

>
> -Matt
>
> Farrukh Najmi wrote:
>
>> Matthew MacKenzie wrote:
>>
>>> I think that you should use DocBook.  I hear it too is an OASIS spec 
>>> :-)
>>>
>>> Relying on WYSIWYG for complex technical documents scares me a 
>>> little bit, but that is just me.  
>>
>>
>>
>> And not having a modern, state-of-the-art WYSIWYG editor for complex 
>> documents scares the living day lights out of me. This to me is the 
>> most important requirement out of the three I proposed.
>>
>>> Look at the W3C, what they are doing is working quite well, and they 
>>> use an XML format. 
>>
>>
>>
>> And Open Office uses an XML format. One that is the basis for the 
>> Open Office Format TC and their future standard.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -Matt
>>>
>>> Farrukh Najmi wrote:
>>>
>>>> Changed subject title to protect the innocent...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Farrukh Najmi wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> BTW I like the idea of having HTML version of specs available 
>>>>>> online. I propose we do this for our specs as well. Any objections?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Duane Nickull wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Docbook?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Actually all I was thinking is to save the document as HTML. This 
>>>> is a cheap and mindless act.
>>>>
>>>> The current spec source in in Word. It has several problems due to 
>>>> limitations in Word for large documents. Longer term I would like 
>>>> to move away from Word. I was thinking of Open Office which is the 
>>>> basis for the Open Office Format TC:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office
>>>>
>>>> Important criterea for choice of formats are:
>>>>
>>>> -Open format (ideally XML)
>>>>
>>>> -WYSIWYG Editors that are useable and reliable
>>>>
>>>> -Ideally freely available software
>>>>
>>>> Open Office meets each of the above requirements. Software is 
>>>> freely available from:
>>>>
>>>>    http://www.openoffice.org
>>>>
>>>> Also since it can open Word formats migration from Word to Open 
>>>> Office would be relatively painless.
>>>>
>>>> What do people (and specialy Sally) think?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>


-- 
Farrukh




[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]