RE: DOCBOOK: OT: DocBook and Literate Programming?

["Jeff Duska" <jeff at duska dot com>]

First, I want to thank everyone for the comments on Literate Programming. I
am familiar with JavaDoc, which does a nice job. It is just not far enough
for what I want to do. There is a similar unsupported tool from Microsoft
called AutoDuck. This works for VB, C++, and Java.

One of the suggestions a few people on other list have suggest where
mentioned here. This is using XML and then use a preprocessor to create the
documentation and the source code. This could work, but wouldn't it really
be creating a new language. I've thought this might not be a bad idea
creating GPML General Program Markup Language - XML application. I figure
VB, Delphi, Powerbuilder and the whole IDE type programmers wouldn't mind if
the source code because XML. C/C++/Perl/Java programmers would most like
never touch it. It could be quite powerful to store your source code in this
type of metadata format. You might even be able to port programs from one
language to another using advanced XSLT.

The big advantages would be a much simpler design for IDE and editors.
Features like code folding would be easy. A DTD or schema could be used to
validate the code. You could also include links to UML documents, which
could really be SVG files, text and etc. I realize that this is really a
pipe dream, but I curious to hear people's comments.

Back to matter at hand and out of the clouds. I have two very newbie
questions, please forgive me. I didn't see a quick answer to these
questions. If there is a quick answer, please just drop a point to me.
First, I wanted to know how Norm create the MS htmlhelp version of the
DocBook project. I skimmed over your notes in chapter four, but was a bit
confusing. It seemed to imply that there is a DSSSL Style Sheet that can do
this, but in the table is says no it can not do this. Okay, what the trick
how did you do it?

Next, which is the better way to create a DocBook project today. Should I
use XML or SGML? I figured you'd want to use XML, but I don't understand
where all the tools are to get a printed document created. I might just be
missing something.

Again, thanks for putting up with my stupid questions and flights of fancy.

Regards,

Jeff Duska