Cookbook: Docbook vs. LaTeX

[Sean Wheller]

On Tuesday 13 June 2006 06:56, Susan Stewart wrote:

Hello Susan,

Many thanks for your proposal.

>
> I lean toward LaTeX for the following reasons:
>
> Whether we self-publish or go with a traditional publisher, we want to
> have a print copy of the cookbook.  In my limited experience, I've never
> run into a publisher that will take a manuscript in docbook form, but I
> know of several that work in TeX and/or LaTeX.  If we go with docbook,
> and the publisher needs LaTeX, someone has to do the work of converting
> the docbook to LaTeX and re-proofing to make sure nothing weird
> happened.  I'd rather devote our energy to content.

Publishers generally do not need LaTeX. In fact PDF files are much preferred.
Transformation from Docbook 2 LateX is possible, as is transformation from 
docbook to Open Document Format.

Here are some examples of PDF produced from Docbook. We can further enhance 
the formating and layout to meet edubuntu requirements.
http://www.freedomtoaster.org/?q=Build
http://www.freedomtoaster.org/?q=resources

>
> Lyx is a very newbie-friendly WYSIWYG editor for LaTeX.  I'm not aware
> of something similar for docbook (if there is, this point is moot, so
> please let me know).  Documentation is one of the places where
> non-sysadmin types get to contribute back to the community, and we need
> it to stay that way.  I'm afraid we may alienate a whole category of
> potential documenters if we ask everyone to do markup by hand (docbook
> or any other kind).

There are numerous XML Editors available. Gedit is the most readily accessible 
on GNOME and Kate on KDE. Other than this virtually any structured editor 
will work.

>
> More people at the last cookbook meeting stated they had experience with
> LaTeX than with docbook.

Docbook is not difficult. In many cases, if you have an existing document you 
can easily see how to markup texts.

>
> That said, I'm told that the ubuntu documenters use docbook across the
> board.  That's both a plus in itself (as consistency is good) and
> something that suggests there may be benefits to docbook I'm not aware
> of.  (docbook proponents, this is your cue)

Docbook is presentation neutral and transforms to many target presentational 
formats. It also enables nice integration with the i18n processes.

For purpose of updating and integration with the tuXlab cookbook version 2, we 
have already started the process of porting the wiki work to docbook.

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