[antlr-interest] Wish we had used XML for all documentation now?

Martin Probst mail at martin-probst.com
Wed Aug 10 05:22:56 PDT 2005


Hi,

> XML is not a natural documentation language. Its ok when you have a GUI
> in between generating XML files, but otherwise its cumbersome to edit
> for extended periods or large documents.

Yes, but by now there are really nice pseudo/half WYSIWYG XML editors,
especially for DocBook. There are even editors which can be used by non
technical (or less technical) people, in contrast to LaTeX. LyX doesn't
count, it gives you the cumbersome customization of LaTeX combined with
the weak features, clumsiness and sometimes even unstability of MS Word.

> 
> LaTeX is heaven. Its like programming your papers which is more natural
> than WYSIWYG.

Well, it surely is quite close to heaven iif the recipient of your
document supplied a LaTeX style, or you can choose yourself and like the
given style.

In any other case you'll have to change the appearance using that macro
processor language from hell, or even worse fiddle around with BibTeX.
Ugh.

I would always prefer DocBook (less work) or maybe DITA (more work, but
easier to customize) over it - changing stylesheets is quite easy and
you've got nice semantic markup that can be transformed into any target
format (CHM!).

Martin



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