On Mon, 2011-04-04 at 18:09 -0700, David Hill wrote: ... > > I get more and more put off using markup-based document preparation > systems the more I think about it. Perhaps I am spoiled, but, like > many volunteer workers, I haven't enough time for all those things to > which I am already committed and, rightly or wrongly, think that > taking a step back to a markup basis for document production would be > counter-productive, whilst the results (possibly because of my own > inexperience) would probably be a lot less than satisfactory. If I > were producing mathematical text books I probably would have to use > TeX, but I'm not. I have frequently used HTML in the past, but the > appearance depends on the browser used to read it, and HTML has > significant limitations. I also used nroff and troff long ago, as well > as other less well known m-u-l's. > > > Your feedback and suggestions are much appreciated, but I haven't seen > anything to change my view -- yet!
XML is to documentation systems as democracy is to forms of government: it is the poorest except for any other approach that has been tried. Yes, to make it work--either in a volunteer project or a going concern--you need a critical mass of skills around XML and XSLT. But the advantages over word processing or page layout systems include: 1. easy search, diff, and file manipulation with shell commands 2. plethora of open-source and commercial XML tools 3. multiple output formats 4. better source-controllability 5. can auto-generate content 6. programmatically check content and structure 7. platform- and tool-independent Regards, --Paul _______________________________________________ gnuspeech-contact mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnuspeech-contact
