Re: Doc Book DTD?

[Dan Emory <danemory@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 06:15 PM 5/10/99 -0700, Elaine M. Brennan wrote:
>At 09:09 AM 5/7/99 -0700, Dan Emory wrote:
>---------------Snip
>>1. DocBook is the DTD/EDD from hell. Among other things, it probably takes
>>the prize for being the most difficult one for authors to use. It's what you
>>would expect for a DTD developed by a committee, the majority of whom were
>>not working professional writers.
>
>DocBook was never intended to be a DTD that comapnies used "as is", straight 
>out of the box . As with many of the major SGML DTD initiatives, it was seen 
>primarily as an interchange/meta dtd that individuals and companies
>would/should 
>customize to meet their own requirements.
>Rather than starting from your existing paragraph tags, start by trying to
>understand
>what kinds of content you have in your document set, what your requirements
>are for 
>using that content, and then see how those requirements map to DocBook, or
>to CALS, 
>or to Pinnacles, or to TIM or to ATA 2000, or to J2008 or to any one of a
>horde of 
>other standard DTDs that are available.
>If you simply adopt some one else's DTD without doing your own analysis
>work, you're 
?likely to end up with a DTD that's a little bit too big (leading to tag
>abuse), a little bit too 
>small (leading to constant tweaks and changes), a little bit too hot, or a
>little bit too cold.
=============================================================
But why even bother starting with a kludge such as DocBook, or any of the
other DTDs itemized above? If the idea is to customize the "Standard" DTD,
then the concept of document interchange between enterprises using a common
DTD is out the window anyway, so why should anyone bother to map their
content into one of those DTDs if they aren't required to for document
interchange purposes?

The document analysis and content modeling activities can usually be done
faster and better when you start with a clean slate. It almost always makes
more sense to do it that way unless conformance to a "standard" DTD is
mandated, in which case you're probably up the creek, because most "standard
DTDs are the kludged-up, lowest-common-denominator product of mindless
committees. 
     ====================
     | Nullius in Verba |
     ====================
Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971 E-Mail: danemory@primenet.com
10044 Adams Ave. #208, Huntington Beach, CA 92646
---Subscribe to the "Free Framers" list by sending a message to
   majordomo@omsys.com with "subscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.


** To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@omsys.com **
** with "unsubscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.   **