Hi Joep,



> I had a brief look at the structure. Did not try it, but are familiar with
> creating xml documents by hand. Quite easy indeed and unambiguous, but
> pleasant? ;)
>

Well, when I'm using Word, I always wonder what it does, what will it
replace without asking, what will be the next style, etc... Unpredictable
behavior, at least from my point of view :) So, for me it's unpleasant. On
the other side, using XXE with XML file and constraints declared in a DTD,
there's no surprise. Predictable behavior. So, I'd say pleasant...


>
> I think we need different introductions, split hardware and software, split
> main features from all the details, so this will become quite a few files
> for each blog/topic. Multiplied with the large number of blogs we'd like to
> have, this will be many, many files...
>

DITA's way to organize things shows how unorganized we are :) First step in
using DITA is to define what type of document we're able to produce, and for
each, what is the expected structure. I guess having a hierarchy of
directories very will structured (tutorials, practice, theory, etc... I
don't clear ideas right now) will also help understand how DITA map are
builds, and will make the "many files" point less critical.


>
>
>>
>> As an alternative, as sometime you can see in books, we can specifically
>> say it comes from a blog. Each chapter (or section, I don't know) is then
>> authored by someone, explaining the whole.
>>
>>
> For appendix, it's okay to say it is from a blog, but not withinn a 'book'.
> And if we want to prevent duplication of (similar) documentation, we also
> need to deal with the difference between the main topics (as used in the
> tutorials and introduction) and all the gory details (for the full manual).
>

Do we really need to be that formal ??


>
> I would suggest an other approach (which probably needs a preprocessor for
> the dita files).
> - each chapter is a file, authored by someone.
> - we define labels for each target, like tutorial, introduction, reference
> (and a few more, probably 6-8).
> - in the document we can put xml tags to include or exclude the content for
> a specific target, e.g. like
> <include_for_target>tutorial</include_for_target>.
>
> I don't know how difficult it is to create such a pre-processor or if it is
> workable solution for most authors without a major course on jallib document
> writing...
>
>

I don't see your point about labeling. Would you like ditamap automatically
built ? Something like "get all document labeled with "tutorial", and put
the whole in this section" ? How will you deal with the order ? I think just
manually assemble ditamap should be enough (pick an intro, pick some theory,
few tutorials, mix... and voila, a new book).

With XML, many things can be done, still you have a strict DTD to respect.
We can derive from a DTD and enrich XML, adapt XSL stylesheets, but then
it'll be a real p.i.t.a... IMO.


Cheers,
--
Sébastien Lelong
http://www.sirloon.net
http://sirbot.org

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