Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: finding answers quickly

[Andrew Suffield]

On Fri, Oct 01, 2004 at 11:08:24AM +0900, Miles Bader wrote:
> Andrew Suffield <address@hidden> writes:
> >> Markup languages like docbook (and many other sgml derived languages)
> >> are different -- they almost seem text hostile.  They give you powerful
> >> tools for adding meaning to text, but often seem to obscure the actual
> >> text in the process!  For automatically produced documents, or documents
> >> with an extremely regular format, that might be fine, but it seems to
> >> artificially emphasize minutia at the expense of the larger whole.
> >
> > This is 'normal' for publishing-grade stuff, which is one of the
> > targets of docbook. Compare it to latex. It's intended for writing
> > technical manuals, after all.
> 
> I've done a lot of "technical" writing in latex, and latex seems much
> better in this respect -- and I don't even like latex (super powerful,
> but world's most crufty macro language)!  Of course there's lot of
> non-text stuff, but it usually doesn't overwhelm the text.

Nor does docbook really, unless you lay it out in an insane manner.

> Also note that Texi is intended for writing technical manuals too, and
> manages to be less annoying than docbook.

But fails to produce something which is really viable for publishing
in hardcopy form. That's the point really. You need lots more data for
that (docbook and latex approach the problem from opposite ends).

Both docbook and latex are viable (and are frequently used, if not by
a large number of people) for professional publishing of books
(although they do not normally use the nwalsh stylesheets that are
commonly associated with docbook).

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
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