DocBook and Publishing - Any Opinions?

coding in XML for future uses

[pjamescowie]

Anyone out there familiar with / actively using DocBook as a basis for publication?

Reviews? Opinions? Suggestions? Comparisons? (with LaTex? others?)

I'm compiling a large number of research and subject bibliographies for my content heavy website and don't want to miss the chance of getting in on the ground level for effective mark up of information.... naturally enough, I'd like my hard work to survive for years to come.

Would ideally like to code the info in an XML language, then use the files as a database for future presentation / transformation....

Anyone?

I'd really appreciate any advice at all on this matter. Thanks in advance...

[tedster]

I have some connections who are hands-on, and I'm putting out a request for them to visit this thread.

From what I've heard, LaTex still has more visual/rendering markup and DocBook is more purely structural. That's not much input, I know, but perhaps others will come along and expand for you.

[pjamescowie]

Thanks, Tedster, I definitely appreciate your efforts on my behalf!

Looking forward to hearing from your contacts......

[pjamescowie]

I should say I'm also looking for ideas as to how the DocBook can be made to fit in with the Open Office project, as I'm planning on adopting this as my primary Office suite.

[dkubb]

I've thought about doing this for my next website.

My idea was to write the main content in Simplified Docbook, then use XSLT to transform it into an output format, which would probably be XHTML 1.1. The beauty is that if I maintain some consistency in the XML file format, I can add new XSLT files to support other output formats as needed.

I've done some experiments transforming between Simpified Docbook and XHTML with good results. I've found that SD allows me to describe all the content and meta-data that I also want in the output. Normal Docbook is a huge beast, I think I'll stick with SD for now. It should be possible to transform SD into normal Docbook should I ever feel the need to go that route.

I used AxKit 1.0 and Apache 1.3.27 as the framework, but I'd prefer to use Apache 2.0, which AxKit doesn't work with.. I've thought about writing my own simple Apache 2.0 handler to do it in the mean-time, at least until AxKit 2.0 is ready. (I don't know what their status is on AxKit 2.0. It seems to have been talked about, but I haven't seen any real progress lately)

Again, I haven't done any real-world tests using this framework, mostly just playing around with a handful of pages. If you do go this route I'd love to hear how it works our for you.

[pjamescowie]

Thanks for your reply dkubb - I'll certainly let you know when I get something happening.

I was intrigued by your reference to Simplified DocBook. Is this version documented anywhere online? I'd sure appreciate some pointers.....

[tedster]

[oasis-open.org...]

[pjamescowie]

OK, thanx Tedster, I''ll take a look.