Mike Kupfer wrote: > >>>>> "Roland" == Roland Mainz <roland.mainz at nrubsig.org> writes: > > Roland> the XWiki format is XWiki-specific (or better: > Roland> application/vendor-specific) and is far less capable than > Roland> DocBook, e.g. we loose interopabilty, portabilty, all the > Roland> processing capabilties the DocBook toolschains have and AFAIK > Roland> there are not many editors which have XWiki markup support. > > I agree that we would lose those things, and I'm not happy about it. > But if we're not actually taking advantage of Docbook's features, I > don't see this as a compelling argument. I think it's more important to > make it easier for people to contribute DevRef updates.
Erm... are you sure the XWiki format qualifies itself as "easier" ? > So far, I seem > to be the only person making changes. Umpf... this comment reminds me of a piece of history (and see at the bottom of this email, too): AFAIK the same arguments were done more than twenty years ago for the X11 documentation. Instead of sticking with a standard format the X11 Consortium picked an application-specific format to do most of the X11 documentation. Twenty years later these files were simply "blobs of raw data" where the applications weren't available anymore (and even if you had binaries you needed a license key), the file format documentation was incomplete (making it impossible to write a converter) and the people who originally wrote the documentation were long retired or "gone". At the end all these documents were unuseable, unsalvageable and simply "lost" - because twenty years ago someone picked the "hip&&cool file format of the month". That's why I am unhappy that we try to repeat this _mistake_ of picking an application/vendor-specific file format again (and specifically Sun has a longer history of repeating this particular issue over and over again (while spending lots of money in supporting the DocBooks folks in parallel)). Just because the XWiki format is "hip&&cool" in 2009 it doesn't mean it will be usefull in 2015. > Roland> 2. AFAIK the newer DocBook XSLT stylesheets have Wiki support (I > Roland> think it's MediaWiki bur I am not sure) - did you take a look > Roland> at that yet ? > > I remember taking a quick look a couple months ago and not seeing > support for wiki formats, but I'll take another look. Ok... I droped a note in the DocBook mailinglist to get some information back... > Roland> 3. If we really switch the documentation to the XWiki > Roland> format... how do we do the output for printed media or > Roland> embedding the documentation in a larger set of docments > Roland> (e.g. like a book) ? > > For printed media, you'd print it like any other page on the site. Erm... that's not what I mean. "Printed media" is not equal to "Convert Wiki to HTML and then print it". "Printed media" in this context means that it has been laid-out for paged devices (e.g. a printer) while the printout of a Wiki page from a HTML browser is basicall a scollable view rendered on paper (or short: The difference is that some pages really look like "garbabe" because things like page breaks are missing, tables are broken-up the wrong way etc. (a better description of the differences can be found in one of Knuth's TeX books)). > I don't know how you'd embed it in a larger document like a book. DocBook allows you to grab one set of DocBook/XML files and include it in other DocBook documents (e.g. to describe it for a C programmer: #include/#ifdef/#else/#endif processing can be done with xinclude+DocBook features), e.g. one text can be re-used by multiple different DocBook documents. > But > like I said above, since I don't see people doing that, removing that > capability doesn't seem like an important issue to me. What happens if you go away in 15 years and the XWiki format has changed or was replaced with a newer version fo "hip&&cool software of the month" ? Don't we already have enougth pain with the propiretary Jive page format ? ---- Bye, Roland -- __ . . __ (o.\ \/ /.o) roland.mainz at nrubsig.org \__\/\/__/ MPEG specialist, C&&JAVA&&Sun&&Unix programmer /O /==\ O\ TEL +49 641 3992797 (;O/ \/ \O;)
