On 2006.10.04 21:11, stephen xemacs.org wrote:
> Mark Flacy writes:
>
> > On 2006.10.04 03:18, stephenxemacs.org wrote:
>
> > > But that begs the question. Mark: why does
the GNU Arch Project in
> > > particular, and the Arch community in
general, want semantic markup in
> > > their documents?
> >
> > For the same reason that anyone else would.
> >
> > http://www.dpawson.co.uk/docbook/reference.html#d17e133
>
> But that is a list of *how* to use docbook, not *why*
it's better than
> a strongly presentation-oriented markup language.
Actually, it is a list of what docbook is used for. As
indicated by the title.
Could similar "whats" be done with a strongly
presentation-oriented markup language? Probably. At some
point, however, you'll hit ambiguity.
Try this one: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/DocBook-Demystification-HOWTO/
x50.html
Money quote: "Presentation markup was adequate as long
as your objective was to print to a single medium or type of
display device. You run into its limits, however, when you
want to mark up a document so that (a) it can be formatted
for very different display media (such as printing vs. Web
display), or (b) you want to support searching and indexing
the document by its logical structure (as you are likely to
want to do, for example, if you are incorporating it into a
hypertext system)."
You can also take a page from the LyX point of view (http://www.lyx.org/):
" LyX is a document processor that encourages an
approach to writing based on the structure of your
documents, not their appearance. It is released under a Free
Software / Open Source license.
LyX is for people that write and want their writing to look
great, right out of the box. No more endless tinkering with
formatting details, 'finger painting' font attributes or
futzing around with page boundaries. You just write."
In *my* specific case, I use docbook so that I'm not dicking
around with formatting considerations while I'm simply
trying to get the information written down. I can use the
docbook toolset to transform what I've got into various
formats as needed. I screw around with presentation details
when I'm trying to actually _present_ something, not when
I'm trying to get the ideas together in some coherent
fashion.
Do I futz around with document structure? To some extent,
but it's more along "this paragraph should have been
there...oops, need a footnote...yeah, a reference to that
section would be a good thing for the reader...that needs to
be in its own section...blah, blah, blah"
It's been good enough for me and it's been good enough for a
lot of other people. (http://wiki.
docbook.org/topic/WhyDocBook) If you don't want to use
it for whatever reason, that's fine with me. With no snide
value judgment implied; there are others who don't
particularly care for it (
http://wiki.docbook.org/topic/WhatIsWrongWithDocBook).
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