Re: DocBook Assistance

[Andy Oram <andyo@oreilly.com>]

Excusez-moi, il faut retourner à Anglais pour un moment...

I've worked with DocBook for a few years at O'Reilly and would like people
struggling with it to know that we're willing to help here. Like all the rest
of you, we're strapped for time, but we also want to see DocBook accepted, so
there's an incentive to act as consultants. I've suffered enough with DocBook
that it would give my life some meaning to spare others that same suffering.

(On a more positive note, DocBook becomes natural and easy to use after you
learn the dozen or so tags you really need.)

Lenny, in particular, told me he would put in some time for you; you can
let me
know where he might be helpful.

Personally, I don't have the stamina to help with a guide, but I give moral
support to anybody who does. If I wanted to help in that area, I should have
been a reviewer of Norm and Lenny's book. But I had no time to get involved in
that effort (in fact, I haven't read very much of the book). If some people on
this list find it lacking, go ahead and give the subject another try.

Here's what I can do personally: I've told Tim that I could contribute tips to
a FAQ based on errors I've seen in my authors' formatting. Sample tips
(shortened a bit) would be "Always use <para> tags inside <entry> and
<listitem> tags" and "Don't bother to use a string like Chapter or Section
when
you specify an <xref> tag."

Also, anyone who wants a model can look at the SGML version (the basis for our
published version) of the NAG. That book is being updated as I write. There
are
some oddities left over from the first edition that are not part of standard
DocBook, but the author will strip them out.

We are also in the process here of producing a DocBook version of Using Samba,
which I hope will be ready for public eyes next week.

I joined this list a couple weeks ago, got overwhelmed for a while with the
volume of mail, and just have a moment to post now.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Oram  O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.        email: andyo@oreilly.com
  Editor   90 Sherman Street                     phone: (617) 499-7479
           Cambridge, MA 02140-3233                fax: (617) 661-1116
           USA                         
<http://www.oreilly.com/~andyo>http://www.oreilly.com/~andyo/
Stories at Web site:  The Bug in the Seven Modules,  Code the Obscure
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