Re: [docbook-apps] DocBook vs. LaTeX questions

["Mauritz Jeanson" <mj at johanneberg dot com>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Voogdgeert"
> I'm currently working on my PhD. I writing it in LaTeX (memoir class). 
> My problem up till now is that I need to use a lot of languages in the 
> book that are best typeset with Unicode input, such as Hebrew, Akkadian 
> and other ancient near eastern languages. Combined with this I will 
> need bracketing in a Chomskian linguistic manner and probably some 
> tree-structures as well.
> 
> Although I like the PDF output of LaTeX very much, I thought it might 
> be worthwhile to try and set one chapter or so in docbook. I'm not 
> completely ignorant of xml and other structured texts like LaTeX.
> 
> My questions are:
> Is docbook useful for a PhD like the above mentioned?

DocBook is primarily intended for texts about computers and programming 
but it can be used for many other fields. I am sure you can use DocBook
if you want to. But then again, I don't know much about Chomskian bracketing...

Since your subject matter is in the humanities, maybe TEI is an option:
http://www.tei-c.org/.

> Can I use Unicode withing docbook?

Yes, you can. XML is designed to use Unicode.

> Installing fonts (particularly expert fonts) for use with LaTeX can be 
> time-consuming; how is the font support for docbook, can any font be 
> used provided the right tags are used?

Well, the DocBook DTD itself is not concerned with fonts. But getting the text
to display as expected in the output can sometimes be a chore.

I suppose PDF is your primary output format. Your XML file would then be 
transformed into an XSL-FO file (using an XSLT stylesheet). This file is fed into an
XSL-FO processor that produces the PDF. The font support depends on the 
actual XSL-FO processor used; there are several available.

A lot more could be said, but I suggest that you take a look at these resources 
and get back if you have other questions:

http://docbook.org/tdg/en/html/docbook.html 
http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/.

/MJ





To unsubscribe from this list, send a post to docbook-apps-unsubscribe@lists.oasis-open.org, or visit http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/.