Re: [Groff] XML and groff as frontend

[Zvezdan Petkovic]

On Sat, Oct 22, 2005 at 03:47:19PM -0400, Larry Kollar wrote:
> I use structured FrameMaker at work to write documentation, and one of
> the easier ways I've found to get text into it is to paste it into
> Vim then pipe lines through scripts that wrap blocks of text in tags
> (lists,  sections, and so forth). I then import that into Frame. It
> works very well,  although the technique is probably specific to the
> writer and the work involved.

That's also a nice example of how painful is writing in XML.
You use a totally different tool (Vim) to help another tool that's
supposedly made to help you with XML (FrameMaker).

Also, sections and lists are the least of my issues with XML.
Paragraphs like this one are the problem (quite frequent when writing
about computing):

      Use either <command>cp -a</command> or
      <command>cp -Rdp</command> when copying, to preserve as much of
      the original attributes of an application.
      Then in <filename>rootfs/sbin</filename> make a
      <emphasis>hard</emphasis> link from <command>mke2fs</command> to
      both <command>mkfs.ext2</command> and
      <command>mkfs.ext3</command>.

If you count the characters in markup elements, they'll come quite close
to the number of characters in the real content of the paragraph.
I did the markup after writing, because the number of interruptions of
the thought process is mind-boggling otherwise.

Best regards,

        Zvezdan Petkovic