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Re: AW: docbook suitable for book - creation ?
On Sun, 17 Nov 2002 20:33:25 +0100
"Stephan Wiesner" <stephan@stephan-wiesner.de> wrote:
> Framemaker can import DocBook. So you could write it in DocBook and do
> the final layout with that. You would probably need a week to learn how
> to use Framemaker, though.
> Just another idea we were playing around with.
I'm curious...
When somebody suggests that it would take "a week
to learn" FrameMaker, LaTex, DocBook... whatever,
do they usually mean:
a) a week of 8-hour workdays (i.e., actually five
or six working days) while spending the majority
of your time doing other stuff, like
-- your research
-- your job, for which your employer is actually
paying you?
b) a week of 8-hour workdays, in which you spend
every minute of that 40+ hours reading and trying
and re-trying to get (whichever) software to do
what you need it to do?
c) a "week" of 24-hour days (168 hours), perhaps
actually interspersed with "a life", and therefore
taking a tad longer in sidereal time?
I feel like a real dummy, that it took me several
weeks to learn FrameMaker, although I was producing
useful documents with it within a couple of days
of starting my job. It was only as I had more time
with it, and more interaction (mailing list) with
advanced users that I learned how badly I'd done
the first few docs, and how much re-work was
needed so that they would be smoothly and efficiently
repeatable, expandable, re-usable in future.
That's not to say that the first docs were ugly
to look at, in final form, but the hidden stuff
was not something I'd want to see today.
Every time I turn around, somebody is making
different claims for DocBook (and whether the
pure-and-godly way to do it is DSSSL or XSL,
or... whatever the other choices are). One
minute I'me hearing that I could fire up
OpenJade and have finished product in half
an hour, and the next minute, I'm being told
that... well, no, actually, that would only
give me an output file that I'd then have
to bring into some other system to produce
actual human-usable printouts, or cross-
referenced and hot-linked PDFs, etc.
One minute, its the perfect solution for
the single, busy writer in a small company,
and the next it's "oh no, I wouldn't take
that on unless I had a department of people,
including one or two who could dedicate
themselves full-time to DTD creation..."
So, what's the poop? If I am producing quite
acceptable and timely output in (say) Frame,
BUT am moving to a platform where Frame is not
available, yet still need to produce docs that
are laid out to the company/marketing-dept. standards,
AND keep meeting deadlines that are getting closer
and closer together every month... is DocBook
(and OpenJade, or fill-in-your-favorite-solution)
the ideal solution for me?
/kevin