Re: DOCBOOK: On the size of DocBook...

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso at arbortext dot com>]

At 15:36 2002 09 05 -0400, ed nixon wrote:

>Paul Grosso wrote:
>>At 19:01 2002 09 05 +0100, Dave Pawson wrote:
>><snip/> 
>>>
>>>?Status quo? Seems to me that's how you operate now (TC that is)
>>
>>Yes, that's what I'm suggesting.
>
>Isn't that a little like: Let's discuss this issue by not discussing it; we'll solve it by sweeping it from under our carpet, across the room and under the user's carpet.

No, I'm saying that my opinion in this discussion is that
we may have already found the best cost/benefit tradeoff.
But it's a reasonable discussion to have.

A big problem for me is that I still have not seen a satisfactory
explanation of the user requirement(s) that is(are) driving this
discussion.

>Facetiousness aside with apologies to Paul:
>- it's highly unlikely all tools being used currently can (easily) be configured in the way you suggest (and it *is* a good idea for tools that work that way, although it raises the cost of implementing DocBook even further in any particular context.)
>- this approach ignores the possibile (shall I say probable?) benefits of working through some house cleaning or reorganizing or refactoring of DocBook that might benefit everyone -- users, Technical Committee, volunteer support folks, and stylesheet developer / maintainers. Easily bolting on or unbolting componets on a per application basis is an idea that has tremendous appeal, at least to me.


What user requirements do "bolting or unbolting components
of a per application basis" address?

Personally, I see three disadvantages of that:

1.  someone has to do the bolting for a given application;
2.  the tools have to support bolting/unbolting;
3.  as soon as you bolt together one setup, someone is
    going to want/use/expect a tag you didn't bolt in.

Or, put in terms of user requirements, I see your suggestion
accrues negative rather than positive points in the corresponding
three (plus) user requirement areas:

1.  I can use the off-the-shelf DocBook application with no extra work.
2.  I can find lots of tools that handle my application with little or
    no configuration.
3.  I can expect all of DocBook to be available; I can use TDG as a
    reference with no surprises; I can transfer my knowledge gained
    using other DocBook applications to this one; all I have to tell
    someone else is "use DocBook" and I'll be able to interchange 
    with them.

paul