[Doc-SIG] XML Conversion Update

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

Paul Prescod writes:
 > 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".

  I'd be happy to call it DocBook-with-minimazation and have it really 
be SGML.  Skip the translation to XML.

 > 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)

  At this point, I'm not convinced that DocBook is terribly valuable
for this.  One of the goals remains to make authoring easy, and
DocBook simple has too many long names for things.  That's really
unfortunate, given the rise in the standing of DocBook in the open
source community; I generally consider that a good thing.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake@acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives