255 lines
10 KiB
HTML
255 lines
10 KiB
HTML
<!-- MHonArc v2.5.0b2 -->
|
|
<!--X-Subject: RE: Something I would like to see -->
|
|
<!--X-From-R13: Uertbel Zroynap <UZroynapNph-cbegynaq.rqh> -->
|
|
<!--X-Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 01:04:23 -0400 (EDT) -->
|
|
<!--X-Message-Id: A5F46F4ED18FD211ABEE00105AC6CF077F8030@email.cu-portland.edu -->
|
|
<!--X-Content-Type: text/plain -->
|
|
<!--X-Head-End-->
|
|
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML//EN">
|
|
<html>
|
|
<head>
|
|
<title>RE: Something I would like to see</title>
|
|
<link rev="made" href="mailto:GLeblanc@cu-portland.edu">
|
|
</head>
|
|
<body>
|
|
<!--X-Body-Begin-->
|
|
<!--X-User-Header-->
|
|
<!--X-User-Header-End-->
|
|
<!--X-TopPNI-->
|
|
<hr>
|
|
[<a href="msg02119.html">Date Prev</a>][<a href="msg02121.html">Date Next</a>][<a href="msg02191.html">Thread Prev</a>][<a href="msg02157.html">Thread Next</a>][<a href="maillist.html#02120">Date Index</a>][<a href="threads.html#02120">Thread Index</a>]
|
|
<!--X-TopPNI-End-->
|
|
<!--X-MsgBody-->
|
|
<!--X-Subject-Header-Begin-->
|
|
<h1>RE: Something I would like to see</h1>
|
|
<hr>
|
|
<!--X-Subject-Header-End-->
|
|
<!--X-Head-of-Message-->
|
|
<ul>
|
|
<li><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:ldp-discuss@lists.linuxdoc.org">ldp-discuss@lists.linuxdoc.org</A></li>
|
|
<li><em>Subject</em>: RE: Something I would like to see</li>
|
|
<li><em>From</em>: Gregory Leblanc <<A HREF="mailto:GLeblanc@cu-portland.edu">GLeblanc@cu-portland.edu</A>></li>
|
|
<li><em>Date</em>: Mon, 1 May 2000 22:04:00 -0700 </li>
|
|
<li><em>Resent-date</em>: Tue, 2 May 2000 01:04:23 -0400 (EDT)</li>
|
|
<li><em>Resent-from</em>: <A HREF="mailto:ldp-discuss@lists.debian.org">ldp-discuss@lists.debian.org</A></li>
|
|
<li><em>Resent-message-id</em>: <0xuXfC.A.5zD.WHmD5@murphy></li>
|
|
<li><em>Resent-sender</em>: <A HREF="mailto:ldp-discuss-request@lists.debian.org">ldp-discuss-request@lists.debian.org</A></li>
|
|
</ul>
|
|
<!--X-Head-of-Message-End-->
|
|
<!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin-->
|
|
<hr>
|
|
<!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End-->
|
|
<!--X-Body-of-Message-->
|
|
<pre>
|
|
Everything herein is my opinion, and may be strong, rough, harsh, or
|
|
otherwise undesirable. If you can't handle it, don't read on. I am
|
|
obviously not perfect, and this is definately open for debate, but please
|
|
make sure it's intelligent, and not a flame. Thanks,
|
|
Greg
|
|
|
|
> -----Original Message-----
|
|
> From: Joshua Drake [<A HREF="mailto:poet@linuxports.com">mailto:poet@linuxports.com</A>]
|
|
> Sent: Tuesday, May 02, 2000 9:08 PM
|
|
> To: ldp-discuss@lists.linuxdoc.org
|
|
> Subject: Something I would like to see
|
|
>
|
|
> One of the constant drawbacks for the LDP in getting new
|
|
> authors is the
|
|
> requirement that they submit with SGML. We all know the
|
|
> benefits of SGML
|
|
> but a lot of us tend to ignore the drawbacks. Some of these are:
|
|
>
|
|
> Learning curve
|
|
|
|
True, it's big. But it can be overcome, and the benefits are enormous,
|
|
especially in terms of intelligent searching. I JUST (as in today) started
|
|
to talk to some people about this, and I guess I'll have to write something
|
|
on why I feel it's so important for everybody to look at. In the meantime,
|
|
look at Cocoon (just to a search on <A HREF="http://www.google.com/linux">http://www.google.com/linux</A>). They have
|
|
some very impressive stuff there.
|
|
|
|
> Image handling (in linuxdoc)
|
|
> Ease of editing - Most of us are very comfortable at the
|
|
> command line. A
|
|
> lot of new - very intelligent Linux users are not.
|
|
|
|
What's wrong with emacs? I don't touch the command line for any of my
|
|
editing and validation stuff. Anybody running with a major distribution
|
|
should be able to get emacs, and the setup for psgmls is relatively trivial.
|
|
I'm an RPM guy (not necessarily RedHat, but anything with RPM), and there
|
|
are pretty complete RPM packages of all the stuff that you need to get going
|
|
with DocBook. I don't really think that people should be "learning"
|
|
LinuxDoc at this point, it's fine for people who already know it, but
|
|
DocBook is quite a bit more powerful.
|
|
|
|
> Processing - SGML can be a pain to process and a pain to find
|
|
> errors in.
|
|
|
|
Processing is a pain, I'm with you there, but finding errors hasn't been
|
|
very tough for me. nsgmls does a pretty decent job of pointing out your
|
|
errors.
|
|
|
|
I think that a lot of this will be easier with a good authors section to the
|
|
LDP site, and a good Authors Guide. Perhaps there will need to be more
|
|
resources devoted to this in the way of a mailing list, and perhaps more, I
|
|
don't know.
|
|
|
|
> It's ugly
|
|
|
|
It's ugly, but powerful. Apache is ugly, but it's the most robust webserver
|
|
anywhere. Sendmail is absolutely hideous, but it runs something like 80% of
|
|
the mailservers on the net. Ugly isn't necessarily bad, although it is
|
|
ugly.
|
|
|
|
> I suggest the following:
|
|
>
|
|
> I would like to see the LDP start accepting more than SGML as a file
|
|
> format. My personal taste would be Word Perfect. Why?
|
|
>
|
|
> Word Perfect 8 has the ability to open just about any document format,
|
|
> including Frame Maker.
|
|
> It has the ability to save to HTML, Postcript, Text and RTF..
|
|
>
|
|
> Wordperfect 9 has the ability to save to PDF, HTML, Text, and RTF.
|
|
>
|
|
> They both run on Linux. Wordperfect is free.
|
|
|
|
That's Free as in Beer, and not as in Libre. I won't go any more into why I
|
|
don't like WP anylonger, as it doesn't belong here. Let me quote from a
|
|
couple of emails that I've had in the past several days:
|
|
|
|
Here's a message to and from a fairly new HOWTO author:
|
|
"
|
|
> > As this is a mini-HOWTO, it is written in HTML.
|
|
>
|
|
> The original was done in SGML, is there any way you can provide
|
|
> it to us in that format. We are trying to move to getting
|
|
> SGML for everything, if at all possible.
|
|
|
|
Hi there
|
|
|
|
The instructions indicate that it's okay to submit mini-HOWTOs in HTML.
|
|
|
|
"The mini-HOWTO submissions may be made in either SGML or HTML"
|
|
<A HREF="http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-HOWTO/x88.html">http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-HOWTO/x88.html</A>
|
|
|
|
I didn't have the time to figure out why the sgmltools failed to compile
|
|
on my standard RedHat6.1 box. Also, I know HTML and I don't know SGML.
|
|
Dealing with the new format represents a time committment above that
|
|
which is required for working on the HOWTO itself, and I basically am
|
|
working on the HOWTO only when my wife is asleep. I hope it will be okay
|
|
to continue working on it in HTML, since that's the final format anyway.
|
|
"
|
|
|
|
And a message as part of a chat with someone else in reply to this:
|
|
"
|
|
What The Author misses is that HTML is _not_ the final result; HTML is
|
|
lossy, a shadow on the ground cast by shining one possible lamp over
|
|
the DocBook source.
|
|
"
|
|
|
|
Note that the needle has been changed to protect the record... err,
|
|
something like that anyway.
|
|
|
|
The point is that this person (PLEASE don't be insulted) doesn't understand
|
|
why SGML is better than HTML, or any of the other "output formats" or
|
|
"binaries" as I like to call them. The SGML source allows you to be
|
|
intelligent about what you do with that information. It allows you to
|
|
specify WHAT a part of the document is, and NOT how it looks. By specifying
|
|
what pieces of our documents are, we can create a terribly intelligent
|
|
document search feature, that can find every document that would help me in
|
|
configuring my Sun SPARCstation to run the Apache webserver, PHP4, custom
|
|
CGI/bin, and a web-based mailing list manger, by just a single search. It
|
|
can even return intelligent sections of those documents, or just the
|
|
abstracts, so that I know which documents I want to look into further.
|
|
|
|
> They both have the ability to create internal linking and table of
|
|
> contents. They both can handle just about every image format widely in
|
|
> use.
|
|
|
|
While this is important, it's only a small part of what we get from
|
|
SGML/DocBook.
|
|
|
|
> I just don't believe that we can continue to grow the LDP
|
|
> without having
|
|
> a simple way for people to contribute. People should be able to just
|
|
> type something up in Wordperfect.(we could start accepting others as
|
|
> their export filters become better... StarWriter is an example). They
|
|
> can spell check with a single button.
|
|
|
|
Just one key series in emacs. I'm sure it's similar for vi. I'm sure that
|
|
somebody has made a GUI frontend to ispell where you can just drop your
|
|
document and get it spellchecked (if not, somebody go do that right now :).
|
|
|
|
> They can grammar check
|
|
> (reasonably) with a single button. They can save to multiple formats
|
|
> with a single button.
|
|
>
|
|
> Am I suggesting that we dumb some stuff down? You're damn right. :)
|
|
|
|
I agree that we should "dumb some stuff down", but I don't think that moving
|
|
away from SGML/XML is the answer. I think that we just need better
|
|
documentation, and perhaps better help for people who are intimidated by
|
|
SGML, or by DocBook. I know that at least one of my favorite authors is a
|
|
little worried about the proposition of moving to DocBook, and until we can
|
|
make them comfortable, we've got a LOT of work to do.
|
|
|
|
Anyway, that was kind of long, but as you can see, personally I'm opposed to
|
|
using things other than SGML or XML. But that is just ME, and I'm not
|
|
speaking for anybody else (except maybe my alter ego). Please arm
|
|
yourselves with information, and form your own opinion. If you've got
|
|
questions, email the list, or if you're not comfortable, email me, and I'll
|
|
do my best to answer them (not that I'm qualified, but I like to talk).
|
|
Thanks for reading,
|
|
Greg
|
|
|
|
P.S. Josh, going to make it to PLUG on Thursday? Err, it's supposed to be
|
|
Thursday, anyway.
|
|
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to ldp-discuss-request@lists.debian.org
|
|
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
|
|
|
|
</pre>
|
|
|
|
<!--X-Body-of-Message-End-->
|
|
<!--X-MsgBody-End-->
|
|
<!--X-Follow-Ups-->
|
|
<hr>
|
|
<ul><li><strong>Follow-Ups</strong>:
|
|
<ul>
|
|
<li><strong><a name="02157" href="msg02157.html">RE: Something I would like to see</a></strong>
|
|
<ul><li><em>From:</em> Warren Chartier <icebalm@bigfoot.com></li></ul></li>
|
|
</ul></li></ul>
|
|
<!--X-Follow-Ups-End-->
|
|
<!--X-References-->
|
|
<!--X-References-End-->
|
|
<!--X-BotPNI-->
|
|
<ul>
|
|
<li>Prev by Date:
|
|
<strong><a href="msg02119.html">Re: todo (was: RE: Questions about future)</a></strong>
|
|
</li>
|
|
<li>Next by Date:
|
|
<strong><a href="msg02121.html">RE: todo (was: RE: Questions about future)</a></strong>
|
|
</li>
|
|
<li>Previous by thread:
|
|
<strong><a href="msg02191.html">Re: Something I would like to see</a></strong>
|
|
</li>
|
|
<li>Next by thread:
|
|
<strong><a href="msg02157.html">RE: Something I would like to see</a></strong>
|
|
</li>
|
|
<li>Index(es):
|
|
<ul>
|
|
<li><a href="maillist.html#02120"><strong>Date</strong></a></li>
|
|
<li><a href="threads.html#02120"><strong>Thread</strong></a></li>
|
|
</ul>
|
|
</li>
|
|
</ul>
|
|
|
|
<!--X-BotPNI-End-->
|
|
<!--X-User-Footer-->
|
|
<!--X-User-Footer-End-->
|
|
</body>
|
|
</html>
|