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Subject: Re: DOCBOOK: docbook vs latex
My employer, Progeny Linux Systems, faced this issue a couple of years ago, and settled on DocBook. We knew LaTeX, didn't know DocBook, but we've been very happy with our decision. > - latex is by far more comprehensive and better documented (of course, it's > been around much longer) I've found that the web-based documentation for DocBook is superior to that for LaTeX. Despite years of use, I can't do much in LaTeX without a book or two around, because I've never found a web site that covers LaTeX to my satisfaction, whereas DocBook is comprehensively covered by the online version of "The Definitive Guide". > - docbook is simpler and therefore easier to use Easier to write, not necessarily easier to use. * Setting up a build system for translating DocBook to other output formats requires either quite a bit of money for commercial software, or quite a bit of time for open source solutions. Perhaps the time factor is true for commercial software as true. * The firm structure of XML should make it easier to comprehend than the rather erratic syntax of LaTeX ("fragile" commands?). > - docbook-xsl is a very flexible mechanism to generate and customize > html-output whereas latex2html doesn't seem to be maintained very well XSL is indeed great. Bewarned, however, that printed output is problematic. * passivetex seems to be very challenging to set up, and the standard DocBook stylesheets don't always work well with it. * FOP is still rather incomplete and/or buggy; I would never use its output, even for casual use internally. * XEP looks very good from the evaluation version, but is quite expensive for commercial use. We're sticking with DSSSL and Jadetex for now. This means maintaining separate stylesheets (and dealing with DSSSL, ugh). > - docbook has some strange concepts (e.g. xrefs to a section resolving to the > > "Sexction x.y" instead of just the number, making it unflexible for no real > benefit) This can be altered via the endterm attribute to xref, but if you want just the number, then: The default behavior is entirely stylesheet-specific. If you don't like the behavior, change it, although I must admit that at this moment I'm struggling to identify the necessary change. > - working with large documents appears to require more thought and > organization with docbook than with latex I'm not sure what you mean here. The book structure is very simple; including external files via entities is pretty simple. We've been able to do things with DocBook that would be difficult or impossible with LaTeX. As an example, we publish periodic newsletters that are comprised of multiple blurbs that are stored in a database. The blurbs use a superset of the DocBook DTD to define tags like newsblurb and moreinfo (1 or more URLs and/or paragraphs to be displayed at the end of the blurb). The HTML output is created using AxKit. We fully expect the content markup to come in handy for searching in the near future, but that remains a theoretical advantage LaTeX produces very attractive printed output, and does a superb job with mathematical constructs. DocBook offers tremendous power and flexibility, but does not currently compete well with LaTeX in those areas. -- John R. Daily <email><mailbox>john</mailbox><domain>geekhavoc.com</domain></email>
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