Linuxdoc DTD (was: Re: [svlug] multiple sessions in one telnet)

[Joey Hess]

Rick Moen wrote:
> The LDP people somehow recently talked themselves into migrating to
> DocBook SGML, which is significantly more elephantine and baroque than
> even LinuxDoc.

Docbook has four issues, IMHO.

1. Tortuously long tag names (<itemizedlist>, <programlisting>, etc).
2. Designed for complete _books_, and so you have to nest 3 levels or
   tags or more before you even get to writing text.
3. Huge amount of tags, and thus a long learning curve when you have to
   go try to figure out the name of a tag. (This is also a plus, though;
   every tag you can imagine for structured document markup is there.
   Linuxdoc is too limiting for me; if I need a tag for an equation or
   screenshot, or whatever, I want it to be there, and in docbook, it
   always is..)
4. About the only tag that can contain CDATA is <para>. You have to nest
   para tags inside bloody near everything.
   <footnote><para>blah</para></footnote>, etc. Annoying.

That said, I use docbook a lot, and it is possible to learn (I keep a
cheatsheet of tag names and paste them into vi sometimes.), and I've
found the results are worth it.

> Also, they keep getting glazed-eyed and making
> discomfiting noises about "formatting"

Yeesh.

-- 
see shy jo