ms word vs html ?

[Eric Eisenhart]

On Tue, Oct 01, 2002 at 09:32:19AM -0700, augie wrote:
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> On Tue, Oct 01, 2002 at 02:32:23AM -0700, error wrote:
> > My friend who will not join this discussion agrees with eric on the idea
> > of XML. I also think XML is useful. However I feel that the end user
> > writing the document might be squimish unless you are running linux (and
> > you are considering .doc so that might not be an option.).
> > If you can go with xml do it it is the way to go.
> > Then you can run one script that converts your documentation to
> > everything else, pdf, rtf, html, ascii art :)
> 
> well you've piqued my intrest about xml. but i don't know much about
> xml, what are its advantages over html, and specifically what would be
> better about it in this instance?

Well, better start getting your terminology right...  ;)

XML is a general format.  Typically when you have a DTD (Data Type
Description) you create a specific format, and most of those specific
formats have a name.

For instance, "XHTML" is XML with a DTD so very much like HTML (4.01
transitional) that it parses as valid HTML except for a few harmless '/'
characters.  In fact, if you're writing new HTML files, it's a good idea to
be XHTML 1.0 compliant instead of HTML 4.01 transitional, though it's a
small transition from HTML 4 to XHMTL 1.  (lower case everything, put in all
those closing tags that used to be optional so you left them out and add a
trailing / inside tags that don't have any kind of end, like <br> -> <br/>,
<img src="foo"> -> <img src="foo" />

DocBook is another XML format with a DocBook DTD.

There are general purpose XML editing tools.

For a given format, it's quite likely that there are also specific tools. 
DocBook has various editing tools available.  Most modern HTML editors can
edit XHTML.

> since most likely i'll be the one who is the XML/HTML Editor running
> some software like DocBook wouldn't be a problem. 

The software you need is actually mostly SGML, XML and XSL stuff; I did a
quick check and these tools are available for Linux, Windows and MacOSX. 
(Not sure about MacOS9 and earlier, though)

http://www.docbook.org/
http://teledyn.com/help/XML/?Editors

> so it may be that i don't win the open vs proprietary standards war
> this time, but perhaps i can wow them with the versitility of open
> standards with something like docbook.

Then you can, in one fell swoop ("make"; assuming you create an appropriate
Makefile for it), create some decent browseable HTML as well as at least one
printable format.  The look will be totally different, as appropriate for
each purpose.

(DocBook is *made* for documenting programming projects)
-- 
Eric Eisenhart                                  eric-dot-sig at eisenhart.com
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