atw: Re: DocBook

Hi Kristina,

We did a fair bit of research into using DocBook with Structured =
FrameMaker. DocBook seems suited to large legal/contract type documents =
and we found it fairly inflexible.  Next we investigated Ditta and found =
it easier to use as you can pick and choose your "valid at the highest =
level element" ~ this was looking promising for a while, but we ended up =
with a number of corner cases that the customer was unhappy with and =
which could not be accommodated in standard Ditta. Once we started =
evolving sections of ditta and writing our own DTD we lost the promise =
of being able to use existing XSLT transforms to rearrange the XML so we =
could pull it into other applications.  Thankfully we found a Frame plug =
in called FrameSLT which allowed us to do Xpath "like" transforms =
without having to do the full XML round tripping read/write rules etc.

Before you can create your DTD you need to have a good understanding of =
your business/doco requirements. After gathering your requirements (from =
product development/marketing/sales/Tech Support etc) you work out your =
granularity: the smallest piece of information that you want to =
manipulate. Once you know how the content will be used you can start =
building the DTD.   I prefer writing the DTD in little steps, testing =
each valid at the highest level element, then adding the next ~ some =
colleagues prefer to do the lot then work through any issues ~ it =
depends what works best for you :)

If you using FrameMaker I'm happy to provide some sample files off list.

Regards,

Luke Hoban
emorphus @ gmail.com


 -----Original Message-----
From:   kadang@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:kadang@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]=20
Sent:   Wednesday, 30 March 2005 10:24 AM
To:     austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject:        atw: DocBook

We are looking at converting some of our manuals and help to DocBook. I
have done quite a bit of web searching, looking for information and
applications, but thought that I should also call on your experience.

Does anyone use DocBook to write their documentation? What do you use it
for? How have you found it to use? How did you find out how to write to =
the
DocBook DTD? Which editor do you use to write your documentation?

Thanks for your comments.

Kristina Cunningham

=20
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