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RE: I'm trying to set up docbook-tools...


A few minutes searching might pop up some immediately useful "Getting
started with DocBook"-type documents. Useful for those that just need to
get things done, as well as those who wants to make SGML and DocBook
more palatable. Try for instance these:

 A Practical Introduction to DocBook
 http://www.oswg.org/oswg-nightly/oswg/en_US.ISO_8859-1/articles/DocBook
-Intro/docbook-intro/index.html

 DocBook HOWTO
 http://metalab.unc.edu/godoy/using-docbook/using-docbook.html

 Practical information about the use of SGML/XML and DocBook on Debian
 http://www.debian.org/~bortz/SGML-HOWTO/potato/howto.html

 Practical information about the use of SGML/XML and DocBook on
WindowsNT
 http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hoenicka_markus/ntsgml.html

 A fairly complete guide to O'Reilly's DocBook based production system
 http://www.oreilly.com/people/staff/crism/dsssl/orastyle/index.html

 I've got many more if you care ...

I can't see how whining about the esoteric SGML community can be
justified (see link above). I can't see how blaming a single person
(Norman Walsh) for the lack of shrink-wrapped SGML and DocBook tools can
be justified. SGML is no more a holy grail than C++ or Lisp, and about
as immediately useful (that is to say, useless). DocBook is about as
immediately useful as STL (that is to say, useless). If you disagree,
reflect for a moment just how much prior knowledge and experience is
needed before these tools become productive. Now of course, it has
become a lot easier to use C++ and STL during the years, easy
installation, integrated development environments, tutorials, etc. etc.
It takes time and the contributions of a lot of people. Why should SGML
and DocBook be any different?

Kind regards,
Peter Ring

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