The OpenOffice format will likely embed all of the style information
leaving the XML as a bunch of goop. But hey...we can open it in Notepad.
DocBook is my suggestion, and I'll point out that many technical books
are written in DocBook. Those authors manage.
I don't want to argue this, just please take my suggestion (or leave
it). The virtues of DocBook are well documented. A well structured
document source tree, as evidenced in Norm Walsh's Docbook: The
Definitive Guide actually reduces document complexity.
-Matt
Farrukh Najmi wrote:
> Matthew MacKenzie wrote:
>
>> I think that you should use DocBook. I hear it too is an OASIS spec :-)
>>
>> Relying on WYSIWYG for complex technical documents scares me a little
>> bit, but that is just me.
>
>
> And not having a modern, state-of-the-art WYSIWYG editor for complex
> documents scares the living day lights out of me. This to me is the
> most important requirement out of the three I proposed.
>
>> Look at the W3C, what they are doing is working quite well, and they
>> use an XML format.
>
>
> And Open Office uses an XML format. One that is the basis for the Open
> Office Format TC and their future standard.
>
>>
>>
>> -Matt
>>
>> Farrukh Najmi wrote:
>>
>>> Changed subject title to protect the innocent...
>>>
>>>
>>>> Farrukh Najmi wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> BTW I like the idea of having HTML version of specs available
>>>>> online. I propose we do this for our specs as well. Any objections?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Duane Nickull wrote:
>>>
>>>> Docbook?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Actually all I was thinking is to save the document as HTML. This is
>>> a cheap and mindless act.
>>>
>>> The current spec source in in Word. It has several problems due to
>>> limitations in Word for large documents. Longer term I would like to
>>> move away from Word. I was thinking of Open Office which is the
>>> basis for the Open Office Format TC:
>>>
>>> http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office
>>>
>>> Important criterea for choice of formats are:
>>>
>>> -Open format (ideally XML)
>>>
>>> -WYSIWYG Editors that are useable and reliable
>>>
>>> -Ideally freely available software
>>>
>>> Open Office meets each of the above requirements. Software is freely
>>> available from:
>>>
>>> http://www.openoffice.org
>>>
>>> Also since it can open Word formats migration from Word to Open
>>> Office would be relatively painless.
>>>
>>> What do people (and specialy Sally) think?
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
--
Matthew MacKenzie
Yellow Dragon Software Corporation
http://www.yellowdragonsoft.com/
m: +1 506.869.0175
