From DoubleC@acc.co.nz Wed Mar 28 17:43:21 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: DoubleC@acc.co.nz X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 29 Mar 2001 01:43:21 -0000 Received: (qmail 57752 invoked from network); 29 Mar 2001 01:43:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 29 Mar 2001 01:43:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO webgw099.acc.org.nz) (203.167.220.2) by mta3 with SMTP; 29 Mar 2001 02:44:23 -0000 Received: from mh_acc099 (not verified[10.99.5.50]) by webgw099.acc.org.nz with MailMarshal (4,0,9,0) id ; Thu, 29 Mar 2001 13:45:25 +1200 Received: from ACC_DOM-Message_Server by mh_acc099 with Novell_GroupWise; Thu, 29 Mar 2001 13:40:45 +1200 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.4 Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 13:40:14 +1200 To: Subject: Re: [lojban] Document Management Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: "Chris Double" coi rodo Personally I think the best document format is whatever the author decides = is a good format for their usage. Whatever facilitates their creating of lo= jban material in the easiest possible manner is likely to be a personal cho= ice.=20 When creating documents myself for distribution in different formats I use = custom XML tags. Basically I build a DTD as I go along using elements that = describe the information being stored. I then use XSLT stylesheets to trans= form this to HTML, Docbook, XSL-FO, or whatever. Mainly I use HTML and XSL-= FO (to transform to PDF). Once or twice I go to Docbook to get RTF, Tex, et= c. There is even a system for transforming XML to Latex - I think IBM have = it at their alphaworks site. Images are a bit tricky with this approach. Sometimes I use links to bitmap= s, GIF's or JPG's. Other times I use SVG which is an XML specification for = vector graphics. This is one area where I miss WYSIWYG at times. I think when it comes to a central document management site it would be goo= d if you accepted all formats. Some will be easier than others to deal with= and the end user will end up deciding what they can deal with. Plain text = may very well be the easiest and most useful in the end. I take my hat off = to John Cowan for preparing the entire reference manual in plain text. And = a very nice end product at the end of it.=20 Chris. --=20 http://www.double.co.nz/lojban