RE: [boost] Reference documentation: one approach

From: David Bergman (davidb_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-10-30 12:46:30

Bill said:

--- commenting on the virtues of DocBook vs LaTeX in a discussion with a
pro-LaTeXer

> DocBook can be as simple in two ways.  First, if you use the SGML form
there are a lot of "minimization"
> ?techniques that are allowed.  Your example could be coded in DocBook
as <emphasis/stuff to be emphasised/,
> which is practically identical.  This input can then even be
translated to full XML compliant code, if there's
> a reason for it (such as allowing easy parsing, as discussed above).
Second, when using an XML editor you never
> really have to type the tags any way.

> However, I agree with Dave that it would be beneficial for all if we
had an even simpler solution (preferrably > one that could output
DocBook and/or LaTeX).  So we need to keep our options open and do some
more research.

Has anybody looked at db2tex, or similar tools?

I am a LaTeX junkie myself, and consider it to be quite easy to get
running even on a Windows machine (on that platform I use MikTeX and
Emacs).

But, I must agree with Bill as to the more versatile transformation in
an XML (or SGML) solution such as DocBook. What TeX is extremely good
at, though, is typography, so if we could use DocBook and use a
XML->LaTeX tool for those of us enjoying the professional result of the
TeX renderer...

Then we could have (1) DocBook -(db2tex-similar tool)-> LaTeX
-(pdftex)-> PDF be the "paper" process and (2) DocBook -> XHTML be the
"web" process, thus using DocBook as the canonical representation.

What do you think (as long as we get a decent XML->LaTeX tool...) ?

/David