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Re: XMLSPY and DocBook


(My previous post too fast and far too useless, sorry)
On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 03:45:50PM +0100 - a wonderful day - 
						Gour wrote:
> Corey Arnold (corey@wubios.wustl.edu) wrote:
> > I am considering using DocBook to create a Manual of 
> > Procedures.  Ideally I'd like to do so in an environment 
> > that is easy for those who are unfamiliar with programming 
> > and mark up to understand.  Currently I am trying to use 
> > XMLSPY.  If someone has attempted this before ... 
Editing the sample DocBook instances in xmlspy (a c++-driven 
parser/gui if i remember that correctly) makes my w2k  
governed 800 MHz AMD Duron with 256 MB Memory become very 
ssslllllllooooow. So I guess a 1000 pages Manual 
of Procedures with a lot of figures and indexes etc.
might make the experience of pure content editing in 
the so called "authentic view" a bit unsatisfactory.

> And what about epcEdit (www.epcedit.com)?
Hm, ok I tried out of curiosity ... 

> Very capable, multi-platform, non-Java (performance) 
... did You actually try it? It's a tcl script using 
wish and the tksmgl-lib. So performance on my machine 
linux 2.4 256 MB Mem, PIII-450 was not really that visible, 
ok for a tcl/tk script.

> and the new version will have some very nice goodies.
I tested version 1.2.4 by the way, the new one as of today. 
There are three sample DocBook files as of v4.1.2 included, 
but there are only 2 views offered: Text and Layout. 
- If you enter Text-View, a tip-of-the-day window pops up 
and asks you to better only use text-view, in case layout-view 
does not really work (like no template for visualizing etc.)

- Layout is a markup-dominated view like 
___________                                       __________
|          \                                     /          |
|title      >A Title between some funny Limiters<  title    |
|           /                                    \          |
------------                                      ----------|

(In fixed spacing fonts you get the idea) This view is probably 
not what someone "unfamiliar with programming and mark up" 
wants to work in.

Tools like xmlspy offer (in version 5+) on windows plattform 
so called "authentic views" on docbook instances that seems 
to be more adequate for the casual "Manual of Procedures"
user.

Both have a tabular view in which especially tables are 
quite nice to edit.

HTH and
All the best,
		s t e f a n.
-- 
Stefan Drees, sdrees@acm.org.
Fingerprint = 516C C4EF 712A B26F 15C9  C7B7 5651 6964 D508 1B56


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