Re: docbook-tools-discuss: Re: I'm trying to set up docbook-tools...

[Norman Walsh <ndw at nwalsh dot com>]

/ Bill Campbell <bill@celestial.com> was heard to say:
| I would have liked to see some more discussion of some topics like how to
| build indexes (indices?), cross-referencing, etc. -- i.e. the things one

Yes, there definitely needs to be more about indexing. I also need to
get an XSL solution for indexing, but that's a different problem.

| has to consider when writing books, documentation, and that sort of thing.
| The examples on the CD, and the sgml input for the book have been the most
| useful things for me.

That's why they're there.

| Another thing I would really like to see are more tools that convert
| existing input from ?roff, TeX, and similar markup languages into DocBook
| SGML, because this would make it much easier for those of us who are fluent

A little more discussion about how to convert from procedural markup
to structural markup is probably in order, but tools to do this are
very, very hard to write. This is the problem I call "dragging markup
up hill".  Look at the troff source for an (old) O'Reilly book (I have :-),
and you'll find that the same troff markup for "italic" is used for
all the things that are italic in print. (Quelle surprise). But if you
want to mark those things up semantically, you have to distinguish
between at least three or four different kinds of italic things which
is nearly impossible to do accurately.

| References are invaluable, but they're not usually something that is used
| to initially learn a language.  I've always learned best by seeing concrete

Yep, "Learning DocBook" would be a worthy project.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | The firmest line that can be drawn upon
http://nwalsh.com/            | the smoothest paper is still jagged
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