Re: [SLUG] Tools for documentation.

[Andrew Morton <andrewm@nospam.uow.edu.au>]

Michael Lake wrote:
> 
> > And one other thing:  changebars.
> yep - Latex has changebars.

Really?  Would I be correct in assuming that this is a piece of markup
which says "apply a changebar to the next section"?

If so, then one still needs external toolchain support to be able to
recognise where the doc has changed and to insert the appropriate
markup.  And to _not_ fill the document with changebars if some metadata
is changed, such as doing a global replace on a particular tag.

It's an interesting problem.  I bet someone's done if for docbook.

Although I'm sympathetic to the 'separation of markup and content'
philosophy, I do prefer the traditional wysiwyg approach to
documentation (Adobe Frame.  I've never seen an acceptable technical
document done in MSWord).  The biggest drawback of the wysiwyg tools is
that their outout can't be managed with sensible revision control tools
(eg, CVS).  So when the Docbook-based toolchain has a decent UI, it'll
be a winner.

Allegedly, Frame can do Docbook, but I've yet to see a positive report.

What's the native format for KWord?  XML, I assume.  If so, does anyone
know anything about its DTD?   Koffice is quite amazingly ambitious. 
Those guys are machines...
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