[austechwriter] Re: Word v. XML
- From: Mike Buckler <mbuckler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 18:23:55 +0800
Monday, August 11, 2003, 12:44:20 PM, Melanie wrote:
MK> Hi
MK> While on this topic, does anyone out there use DITA DTD? Can you enlighten
MK> me on the pros and cons of Docbook -v- DITA.
MK> From what I've seen so far, DITA seems to be a better fit if you are
MK> documenting for anything other than purely paper, it also seems to be a bit
MK> easier to learn.
MK> Anyone agree/disagree?
In theory XML/SGML documents don't know anything about running
headers, footers, page numbers, page breaks or any of the other rules
that govern the appearance of a document either on paper or online
help. That is all left to the style rules that map structure and data
to layout and presentation. HTML (an SGML application) broke all the
rules (due to Netcape) by adding font tags and other attributes
that control the visual appearance. Docbook (another SGML application)
was designed properly and isn't polluted by the formatting tags that
afflict HTML.
Writing XML/SGML documents is easy. Writing the style rules that
transform the document into a format for display on paper or on-line
help is much harder and has more in common with programming
than technical writing.
Docbook was designed by a committee and like most things designed by a
committee it's big (300 tags), complicated and rather inflexible. If
you have the opportunity to start from scratch then I suggest that you
choose a simple DTD or build one that matches your existing document
structure.
If you go down the XML/SGML road, make sure you have a WYSIWYG
environment. Editing XML/SGML using a text editor may seem attractive
to begin with, but soon becomes a chore when you have to type in
escape sequences for characters outside of the allowed character set.
Best regards,
Mike Buckler
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