Re: [gnuspeech-contact] Document formats & repository

[Paul Tyson]

On Mon, 2011-04-04 at 18:09 -0700, David Hill wrote:
...
> 
> I get more and more put off using markup-based document preparation
> systems the more I think about it. Perhaps I am spoiled, but, like
> many volunteer workers, I haven't enough time for all those things to
> which I am already committed and, rightly or wrongly, think that
> taking a step back to a markup basis for document production would be
> counter-productive, whilst the results (possibly because of my own
> inexperience) would probably be a lot less than satisfactory. If I
> were producing mathematical text books I probably would have to use
> TeX, but I'm not. I have frequently used HTML in the past, but the
> appearance depends on the browser used to read it, and HTML has
> significant limitations. I also used nroff and troff long ago, as well
> as other less well known m-u-l's.
> 
> 
> Your feedback and suggestions are much appreciated, but I haven't seen
> anything to change my view -- yet!

XML is to documentation systems as democracy is to forms of government:
it is the poorest except for any other approach that has been tried.

Yes, to make it work--either in a volunteer project or a going
concern--you need a critical mass of skills around XML and XSLT.  But
the advantages over word processing or page layout systems include:

1. easy search, diff, and file manipulation with shell commands
2. plethora of open-source and commercial XML tools
3. multiple output formats
4. better source-controllability
5. can auto-generate content
6. programmatically check content and structure
7. platform- and tool-independent

Regards,
--Paul