Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sun, 21 Jul 2002 20:56:19 -0500
From:      Chris Costello <chris@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        developers@FreeBSD.org, hackers@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: troff vs. DocBook (was: Request for submissions: FreeBSD Bi-Monthly Development Status Report (fwd))
Message-ID:  <20020722015619.GB15170@holly.calldei.com>
In-Reply-To: <20020722002823.GB69834@wantadilla.lemis.com>
References:  <20020721141108.GA30472@luke.immure.com> <82745.1027266137@critter.freebsd.dk> <20020722002823.GB69834@wantadilla.lemis.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
[Cc: list massively trimmed.]

On Monday, July 22, 2002, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> IMO the tags aren't the problem with DocBook.  It's just *really*
> difficult to get good-looking results with.  I've actually converted
> the FreeBSD book into DocBook (anybody want a perl script?), but jade
> can't format it, and gmat is a real kludge.  Theoretically, DocBook is
> better, but I want something that works.

   Well, getting something that looks good out of DocBook is a
trivial exercise for somebody who knows how to handle the
formatting-related bits (i.e. the *.dsl stylesheets).  Comparing
ms(7) and DocBook is sort of like comparing apples and oranges.
Basically when you're writing a DocBook document, you're simply
marking up the information--telling DocBook what's what in terms
of paragraphs, lists, host names, the like.

   ms(7) macros allow you to do a lot of the formatting on your
own.  I imagine that ORA is moving/has moved away from it for
that reason: they want their books to look exactly alike, which
is easily accomplished by having authors submit works in DocBook
and applying their own `custom' stylesheet.

-- 
+-------------------+-----------------------------------+
| Chris Costello    | Diagnostics are the programs that |
| chris@FreeBSD.org | run when nothing else will.       |
+-------------------+-----------------------------------+

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20020722015619.GB15170>