RE: DOCBOOK-APPS: best tool for docbook?

["Bradford, Denis" <denisb at rational dot com>]

Apologies if this is not the best forum for this...

I've been writing with Epic (and Adept SGML for several years before that).

First, you are 100% right to worry about how your writers will react -
resistance to markup from people who are used to word processors can be a
serious obstacle. I don't know what the answer is, but adequate training is
essential. Not only in using the tool, but understanding the purpose and
benefits that justify such a drastic change.

Epic is marvellous if you need it. But do a feature-by-feature analysis and
understand which ones you need, because the license cost is just the
beginning. You will need somebody fairly technical (and probably training at
Arbortext) to set it up and maintain it. There seems to be an inverse
relationship between a tool's cost and its usability.

You might take a look at XMeTaL as a compromise, which I haven't used enough
to say much about. In general, it doesn't do everything Epic does (I don't
think it supports fragment documents, and doesn't have the full API that
Epic does), but the tradeoff is a somewhat simpler tool to use and set up.
The GUI is definitely more polished, supporting standard Windows thingies
like drag and drop correctly. By contrast, Epic's GUI can be buggy and
cantankerous (again, the high-end tool's indifference to usability).

Them's my impressions,

______________
Denis Bradford 
Rational Software, 20 Maguire Road, Lexington, MA 02421
denisb@rational.com (781)676-7560
--
Never step on another man's toes - they may be your own -- King Rinkitink

-----Original Message-----
From: klaas holwerda [mailto:kholwerd@xs4all.nl]
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2001 5:12 PM
To: docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: DOCBOOK-APPS: best tool for docbook?


Hi,

I always use a standard text editor (scintilla or nedit) with only XML
tag highlighting.

But this is not the solution for the Authors in my company, the step
would be to big!
They at least need some presentation of what they type in, and some
guidance with the tags.
Especially tables, pictures, list  and such need to be handled in an
easy manner.
Introducing SGML/XML and DocBook is a revolution, so i better do it
right,
else they will refuce.

So i tried FrameMaker Sgml and the docbook stuff coming with it.
Not realy bad, but not so good either, and it is SGML, and it is for an
old docbook dtd.

So the question:

-what is the best XML editor around that has some direct implementation
for (XML) docbook with it.
-the cost is not so important (anything we have to add our selfs will be
more expensive in hours).
-if there is not an XML editor around with a docbook understanding,
still what is the best one to choose for that.

-what are you people using (or better the authors in general).

Any other suggestions on how to make Knowno's (Know Nothing) work with
docbook,
would be appreciated much.

Klaas




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