Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Questions Concerning Style Sheets

[Matthew Harrison <harry at inpharmatica dot co dot uk>]

Stephane Bortzmeyer writes:
 > On Friday 7 July 2000, at 9 h 29, the keyboard of Holger Rauch 
 > <Holger.Rauch@heitec.de> wrote:
 > 
 > > 5. Are there any free (and good) WYSIWYG programs available for writing
 > > DocBook documents 
 > 
 > In the SGML/XML world, WYSIWYG means nothing. When you write DocBook, you 
 > describe content and structure, not presentation (which is left to the 
 > stylesheets). If you insist on WYSIWYG (which is an archaic way of thinking 
 > because it assumes only one output device, typically paper), do not use SGML 
 > or XML.

I only partly agree. Presentation helps people understand the content and
structure of a document. Why can't the writer have the benefits of presentation
as they write? What you see is what you mean. Commercial tools like XmetalPro
give you views of the XML, and the processed version at the same time. XML/SGML
is a good for a file format, but the markup can be very intrusive when all you
have is a text-editor. Even in emacs with syntax colouring, it can be hard to
see the wood for the markup, er I mean trees.

just my 2p,

Matthew