From owner-freebsd-doc Tue Jun 4 19:12:44 1996 Return-Path: owner-doc Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id TAA03023 for doc-outgoing; Tue, 4 Jun 1996 19:12:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from jolt.eng.umd.edu (jolt.eng.umd.edu [129.2.102.5]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id TAA03017 for ; Tue, 4 Jun 1996 19:12:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ginger.eng.umd.edu (ginger.eng.umd.edu [129.2.98.204]) by jolt.eng.umd.edu (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id WAA00812; Tue, 4 Jun 1996 22:12:35 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from chuckr@localhost) by ginger.eng.umd.edu (8.7.5/8.7.3) id WAA01584; Tue, 4 Jun 1996 22:12:34 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 22:12:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Robey X-Sender: chuckr@ginger.eng.umd.edu To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" cc: FreeBSD-doc@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Linuxdoc In-Reply-To: <7005.833939907@time.cdrom.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-doc@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Tue, 4 Jun 1996, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > I sent this to John Fieber, then I realized I should have let the list in > > on it. I was noting that the idea of making an intermediate language > > like linuxdoc is a good one, the only bad part (for me) is the specific > > choice of linuxdoc. The reasons that I can't use it are (1) I've never > > been able to undersatnd sgml all that well, and (2) linuxdoc seems to be > > undocumented. > > My understanding is that linuxdoc is just a DTD, and poorly documented or > not only one part of our SGML environment. > > The choice of SGML itself seems to be a non-issue. Everyone from Sun > to HP to DEC (I live with a tech writer who's a docs project manager > for Sun and worked everywhere else before that) is moving to SGML and > some DTD, O'Reilly and associates has all of its authors writing in SGML > using their own DTD (which they'll provide to anyone for free, BTW) > and the world in general is just moving away from groff and TeX. > > So we're on the right train, let's not let the color of the upholstery > motivate us into switching back to the more familiar yet outmoded > horse and buggy. :-) If Someone who understands sgml would go to the trouble of providing examples of how all the parts of the dtd we use should be used in a document, I would be happy to go and make the changes in the troff substitution code to make the groff output look like it was supposed to. As it stands now, I can't do it, because I don't understand what the sgml sequences that are supposed to drive our code look like. I don't care if we leave sgml or not, I'd like to leave an undocumented system. ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include any kind of voice or data chuckr@eng.umd.edu | communications topic, C programming, and Unix. 9120 Edmonston Ct #302 | Greenbelt, MD 20770 | I run Journey2 and n3lxx, both FreeBSD (301) 220-2114 | version 2.2 current -- and great FUN! ----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------