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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: KDE4 documentation format
From:       Lauri Watts <lauri () kde ! org>
Date:       2006-04-24 22:27:19
Message-ID: 200604250027.19850.lauri () kde ! org
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On Friday 21 April 2006 20:34, Frans Englich wrote:
> On Friday 21 April 2006 19:15, Thomas Kadauke wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I have a question for which I need answers in order to be able to apply
> > for this year's summer of code: Are there any plans to alter / get rid of
> > the current docbook format? Don't get me wrong, I don't want that format
> > to change, I wouldn't even have suggestions, I just need to know if there
> > are plans to change it.
>
> I don't think so. Lauri Watts, our documentation queen, has expressed
> conservatism in this area. Personally, I would find it interesting to
> upgrade to Docbook 5.0, for several reasons.

Yes I'm conservative, but not unreasonable (honest).  What I especially don't 
want to do is land us with a whole mountain of legacy support in 4.0, if 
possible, so it'd be nice to get up to a newer version.

While I would also like to move on, the holdup here is partly the toolchain 
(we have no working toolchain to deal with schema on the scale we need, and 
we do have a very well tested and working toolchain for DTD's) and the snails 
pace that DocBook is releasing new versions.  I would like to get us up to at 
_least_ the upcoming 4.5 release that's in RC, but it's been in RC for like a 
year already.  

There are several really nice things in 4.5 that I really _really_ would like 
to put to use, and a major version of KDE is an excellent time to do so. HTML 
tables for a start, CALS tables are plain difficult for most people to learn, 
but there's plenty of other things that could greatly simplify the docs.  

If it gets released first, I would even go with 5.x, since it's easy to 
generate a DTD out of the schema, so at worst, lack of schema capable tools 
isn't the end of the world.  

Meanwhile meinproc has it's own limitations that have prevented us doing some 
cool things, like systemwide glossary databases, f'rinstance.  While those 
are totally possible in theory, and I've even got working implementations, 
actually doing it in svn has been hamstrung by limitations imposed by the 
buildsystem, or perhaps more correctly my inability to get it to do what I 
want, and that's a hurdle that's going away too.

Overall though: yes, I see no reason to switch away from docbook, even if the 
specific version of it isn't set in stone.

Regards,
-- 
Lauri Watts
KDE Documentation: http://docs.kde.org
KDE on FreeBSD: http://freebsd.kde.org
 
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