Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2016 14:35:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: Andrew <summerfallsaway@gmail.com>
To: lojban <lojban@googlegroups.com>
Message-Id: <6020c533-74ed-4110-abdf-807bec469663@googlegroups.com>
In-Reply-To: <20160615160414.GH19771@stodi.digitalkingdom.org>
References: <20160615160414.GH19771@stodi.digitalkingdom.org>
Subject: [lojban] Re: The great irony of the CLL update project.
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I might have preferred to work with HTML too. If you're considering 
switching, there are a variety of simple templating languages that would 
help you avoid verbose, repetitive markup. And there are probably more 
tools for working with HTML as a source than DocBook.

DocBook having a poor toolchain for converting to PDF seems weird to me, 
though, since I thought PDF was one of the original target conversion 
formats. Could it be just because you're using DocBook 5.x and most 
applications still only support the 4.x series? Or, have you heard of 
Publican <https://fedorahosted.org/publican/>? It's used by Fedora / Red 
Hat for their formal documentation, all of which ends up in both web and 
PDF formats.

~Andrew / cemjig


On Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 10:04:17 AM UTC-6, Robin Powell wrote:
>
>
> So back in the day when deciding what markup to use, I picked 
> DocBook because it could apparently do everything and was very 
> clear.  That is, if you see <emphasis>foo!</emphasis>, you know 
> exactly what that means; clarity for editors. 
>
> To get to docbook, I started with a qausi-HTML dump of the original 
> CLL's .doc 
>
> It turns out, however, that there's no good, direct, free path from 
> DocBook to PDF; you have to go through XSL-FO (what?), LaTeX (badly) 
> or HTML (via Prince, which is what we're using, or other things; 
> they all costs money) 
>
> The irony is that as of now, *every single output format* goes 
> through HTML.  In fact, all of them except PDF *are* HTML (ePub is 
> just the HTML output slightly re-jiggered). 
>
> So I could have saved a huge amount of work, if I'd known about how 
> bad the PDF chain was and if I'd known about Prince, by skipping 
> DocBook entirely. 
>
> (Indeed, one could argue that I should just take the auto-converted 
> HTML and drop the docbook, but actually it has some advantages; the 
> HTML is about 2x bigger (i.e. more verbose), which makes 
> things harder on editors, and we get chunking for free.  But still.) 
>
>
>

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<div dir=3D"ltr">I might have preferred to work with HTML too. If you&#39;r=
e considering switching, there are a variety of simple templating languages=
 that would help you avoid verbose, repetitive markup. And there are probab=
ly more tools for working with HTML as a source than DocBook.<br><br>DocBoo=
k having a poor toolchain for converting to PDF seems weird to me, though, =
since I thought PDF was one of the original target conversion formats. Coul=
d it be just because you&#39;re using DocBook 5.x and most applications sti=
ll only support the 4.x series? Or, have you heard of <a href=3D"https://fe=
dorahosted.org/publican/">Publican</a>? It&#39;s used by Fedora / Red Hat f=
or their formal documentation, all of which ends up in both web and PDF for=
mats.<br><br>~Andrew / cemjig<br><br><br>On Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 10:=
04:17 AM UTC-6, Robin Powell wrote:<blockquote class=3D"gmail_quote" style=
=3D"margin: 0;margin-left: 0.8ex;border-left: 1px #ccc solid;padding-left: =
1ex;">
<br>So back in the day when deciding what markup to use, I picked
<br>DocBook because it could apparently do everything and was very
<br>clear. =C2=A0That is, if you see &lt;emphasis&gt;foo!&lt;/emphasis&gt;,=
 you know
<br>exactly what that means; clarity for editors.
<br>
<br>To get to docbook, I started with a qausi-HTML dump of the original
<br>CLL&#39;s .doc
<br>
<br>It turns out, however, that there&#39;s no good, direct, free path from
<br>DocBook to PDF; you have to go through XSL-FO (what?), LaTeX (badly)
<br>or HTML (via Prince, which is what we&#39;re using, or other things;
<br>they all costs money)
<br>
<br>The irony is that as of now, *every single output format* goes
<br>through HTML. =C2=A0In fact, all of them except PDF *are* HTML (ePub is
<br>just the HTML output slightly re-jiggered).
<br>
<br>So I could have saved a huge amount of work, if I&#39;d known about how
<br>bad the PDF chain was and if I&#39;d known about Prince, by skipping
<br>DocBook entirely.
<br>
<br>(Indeed, one could argue that I should just take the auto-converted
<br>HTML and drop the docbook, but actually it has some advantages; the
<br>HTML is about 2x bigger (i.e. more verbose), which makes
<br>things harder on editors, and we get chunking for free. =C2=A0But still=
.)
<br>
<br>
<br></blockquote></div>

<p></p>

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