Hi Jan,
thanks for your extensive comments, indeed, I haven't explained thoroughly the
objectives.
The question is, if it still has something to do with 'Docbook'.
A new schema doesn't have to share any docbook element either (though it
would allow to reuse XSLT). But I agree that Docbook-slides sound more sexy
than yet-another-noname-slides schema. I think the presentation area is very
general topic with many specific requirements. We should consider carefully
what should be the goal. Simple presentations? Ok. Complex ones? None of us
is probably professional in this area to be able to cover everything
necessary (exams, quizzes, text-to-speech, SCORM/AICC stuff). Do we need yet
another simple but incomplete slides schema? Are we willing to invest a huge
effort into quasi-professional one? Or do we prefer core docbook
functionality? ;-)
1, It is meant to be a presentation for speeches, so not for exams,
quizes, etc.
2, It should be Docbook-like so that existing DocBook users could easily
learn it and also for easier information interchange with DocBook
documents. I'll give you examples below. In some areas it may have more
limited features when something from articles/books isn't applicable to
presentations. Yet it may go behind standard DocBook and provide
specific features for presentation-specific functionality.
3, It should also use the same technologies (XML, RELAX NG and XSLT) so
that the same toolset could be used.
4, The XSLT stylesheets should be extended for basic rendering features.
In general, we can say it is meant to be an up-to-date and more advanced
variant of the original DocBook Slides schema.
Think of the following use cases:
1, You write a thesis, a PhD dissertation or a scientific work, which
later you will have to defend or present in front of a committee. You
use DocBook for the article because you are already familiar with it and
you can just customize the rendering with the XSLT parameters so that
the document meets the formatting standards you are supposed to conform
to. But later you have to make the slides for the defence. There are
lots of things to reuse, like the list of objectives, screenshots or
diagrams, which say something about your work, the table which
summarizes the progress, etc. You can just pull these in to your
presentation and use the same toolset to build the document. This was my
case. I wrote my BSc thesis in DocBook 5.0 but then I just quickly made
a ppt presentation in Powerpoint because there were no tools to reuse
anything from my DocBook sources.
2, You have a software product with extensive documentation in DocBook.
You are giving a speech about this product and have to tell about the
major characteristics. Again, there are lots of things that you can
reuse from the documentation, like list of main features, screenshots,
which show the GUI, charts, tables, etc., maybe some bibliography
entries or links about the software.
So in short, this schema would be a DocBook-like slides schema, which
would be easy to use together with standard DocBook and easy to learn
for DocBook users. It should be complete in that sense that it should
support as many DocBook elements as possible and it should be flexible
in presentation-specific features, as well, but for now, it is not meant
to be a quase-professional schema, yet this does not mean that in later
versions such features cannot be added. As you also said, these areas
require quite specific knowledge. I'd focus more on having a good
foundation with the above goals so that people can start using it with
their DocBook documentation set. More advanced features may be added
later, this may even be project ideas for upcoming SoC projects. :)
Also a support in WYSIWYG editors should be mentioned (the only solution for
non techie end-users). While docbook-based slides (my approach) can be used
instantly, any 'exotic' schema has to be configured first (until it is
widely spread and adopted).
Yes, this is true, indeed. Although I'm a purist and I prefer seeing the
XML markup and work directly with it, I acknowledge its importance. But
again, I'd like to have a well designed and complete schema in the terms
explained above and later look at WYSIWYG editors.
Gábor
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