[Advacs-discuss] docbook xml and tools

[Helmut Wollmersdorfer]

Oliver Elphick wrote:

> There are some other questions about DocBook that I have.

> It appears that DocBook XML is a simplified version of DocBook SGML; I
> suppose if we ever needed the greater sophistication we could just
> switch?

Unfortunately there are a lot of docbook variants existing. The devil is 
in the details. I have only a little bit experience with DocBook SGML. 
But a main disadvantage is, that it seems not developed actively, and it 
does not support character encoding to generated documents.

Personally I don't want to spend to much time in learning _many_ 
languages. I would like to concentrate on XML, as XML seems better 
supported. XML is also upcoming as language for interfaces, which we 
will need to support in later phases of the advacs project (e.g. to 
Tax-Office, company register - this _is_ XML in Austria).

Docbook XML seems easy to learn, and provides nearly all (or more?) 
features we need, as I took an overview yesterday in 
file:///usr/share/doc/docbook-defguide/html/docbook.html
[apt-get install docbook-defguide]

> Which stylesheet do we use?

Which formats should our target documents have?
I assume the usual
- HTML
- PDF
- man
anything else?
A HELP(-HTML) format?

Helmut Wollmersdorfer