Attention Handbook Volunteers...

[Sean Wheller]

On Thursday 27 July 2006 16:52, Jeffrey Elkner wrote:
> Any chance you could send me the tar ball as well? 

Sure even though mdke did post to his user url, I expect more ppl to ask for 
it, so I decided to put a download area on our website under the projects 
menu. Anyone wanting the Docbook XML sources for the Edubuntu Handbook (WIP) 
can download from here 
[http://www.inwords.co.za/component/option,com_docman/task,cat_view/gid,39/Itemid,79/]

> I'd also be grateful 
> for a bit of advice concerning docbook.  For a long while now I've
> considered using docbook for the Python educational materials on which I
> work.  I've found the documentation daunting, however, and decided each
> time to postpone using it and to stick with Lore (the twisted matrix
> documentation system).  Paragraphs like these from the DocBook Definitive
> Guide are the reason why:
>
>     Making an XML Document
>
>     An XML consists of an optional XML Declaration, an optional Document
> Type Declaration, which includes an optional Internal Subset, and a
> Document (or Root) Element. If you're used to using a DTD, many of these
> will be familiar to you. If you're using the RELAX NG version of DocBook,
> many of your documents will omit the Document Type Declaration.

Hmm. I guess that could be confusing. Really, ask the Ubuntu docs team. 
Docbook is easy, really. I remember about a year and a half ago teaching 
people on Docbook via #ubuntu-docs so that we could get the doc project 
running. If just seems complicated.

Your first step is going to be to port the existing documents to Docbook. If 
you contact me off-list with more information, I will see if we can help in 
some nice way.

>
> I'm hoping to "learn by doing", by looking at some docbook markup I can use
> as a model and copy from.  Perhaps your markup of the Edubuntu book can
> serve this purpose.  Are there any other places you could recommend where a
> bear of little brain such as myself can go to learn docbook?

Doing is the best thing. Hack the source, I will help you fix the problems as 
you go.

Hope this helps.

-- 
Ask me about the Monkey.

Sean Wheller
Technical Author
sean at inwords.co.za
+27-84-854-9408
http://www.inwords.co.za