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Re: XML-based Help Authoring tools for customized help

Subject: Re: XML-based Help Authoring tools for customized help
From: Jan Henning <henning -at- r-l -dot- de>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 23:28:05 +0100


For me if you customize docbook, it is not docbook anymore. If I remember well, when I read about the standard, I also read that although you can customize docbook, it is not advisable as the tools would have to be customized to use the new elements or attributes and you loose the advantage of being able to send documents so that everyone can read them through their preferred interface layout.

It doesn't sound too helpful to me to make this an either-or question - "either it is DocBook or it isn'†" After all, we're not arguing ideological purity here, we're talking about tools to get a job done.

Given that DocBook explicitely was designed to be extendable, it seems inappropriate to call something that was derived from standard DocBook by the addition of a few elements or atttributes "not DocBook". At the same time, such derivatives are not any longer standard DocBook. It therefore seem most fitting to ascribe a degree of "DocBookness" to any such derivatives.

And whether or not it is "advisable" to extend DocBook surely must depend on the individual circumstances? After all, if you decide not to extend DocBook, the alternative in many cases will be to create a completely new DTD _and_ completely new tools to work on it. In many cases this will mean a lot more work than extending DocBook, so why should the latter be inadvisable in such cases?

Regards
Jan Henning

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RE: XML-based Help Authoring tools for customized help: From: France Baril

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