Re: [docbook] Ruminations on the future of DocBook (fwd)

[Tom Peters <tom at tompth dot xs4all dot nl>]

(re-sent as another user because my initial post again did not appear on
the list)

On Fri, 30 May 2003, Pierre Machard wrote:

> I kown that this problem depends of the stylesheet, but I believe that a
> lot of docbook's users are not friendly with DSSSL/XSL stylesheets, or
> do not want to learn how to modify stylesheets.
>
> The syntax itself (the DTD) is very comprehensive, the most difficult
> aspect, is the rendering. Don't you agree with that ?

Hear, hear.  The main problem I have with DocBook is not the element set,
it is the tool chain.  It is very hard to get an even moderately decent
print-out.  Vanilla LaTex and even MS-Word do a better job.  Like I saw
Norman mention earlier this year, there is no-one taking care of the tool
chain so that everything from editing to printing gets in place and just
works.  I believe this has been the major obstacle to a more widespread
use of DocBook.

My second problem is that so much mark-up is needed.  Marking up a text
to DocBook easily doubles its size.  It is too much hard work, and
distracts from writing content more than it does help you organize it.

Finally, the hierarchical way the elements and attributes are specified in
the definition makes adding features an N-squared problem.  Suppose I want
an extension to identify a piece of text as a "chemical formula".  Never
mind the rendering: there are many elements under which a "chemical
formula" could properly appear.  As far as I understand DocBook, you have
to explicitly specify them all in the definition.  And if you forget one
and the parser will not allow that new element in that context, the user
will get very frustrated because of the arbitrariness of the exclusion.
  In other words, DocBook needs to be more orthogonal.

On a related note: in the documentation the allowed sub-tags are listed in
an - as far as I can tell - random order.  It is sometimes very tedious to
verify if a specific tag is valid in a certain context.  I suggest
extensive re-ordering of the documentation.

--
#>!$!%(@^%#%*(&(#@#*$^@^$##*#@&(%)@**$!(&!^(#((#&%!)%*@)(&$($$%(@#)&*!^$)^@*^@)

	Tom "thriving on chaos" Peters
		NL-1062 KD nr 149	tel.    +31-204080204
 			Amsterdam	e-mail  tpeters@xs4all.nl



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