[Doc-SIG] XML Conversion Update

[Paul Prescod]

Fred L. Drake, Jr. wrote:
> 
> Paul Prescod writes:
>  > I think that we should use a variant of Docbook and use some SGML
>  > minimizations supported by sgmllib (or that COULD be supported by
>  > sgmllib). WE can trivially use sgmllib+sax to normalize minimized SGML
> 
>   So you favor SGML over XML?  

I favor a well-defined subset of SGML using basically the XML features
plus end-tag minimization. That can massively cut down on the annoyance
factor.

If we ship a simple PyML to DBXML script with Python nobody will
complain that we are doing something "non-standard".

> That had been my original thought, but
> I shifted as more & better XML tools became available.  

Well in the Python universe any XML tool that uses SAX or the DOM *is*
an SGML tool. Admittedly the Java world is not as open-minded as we are
but that's their problem. Jade certainly has no problem with either XML
or SGML.

I think that trying to stick carefully to DocBook is probably too much
work. We should design a Python-ic variant -- just like we do with APIs.
We can use a transformation to "get to" the standard version (just as we
use classes/functions for abstraction in APIs)

 Paul Prescod