Re: [Groff] doclifter on groffer.man

[Eric S. Raymond]

Larry Kollar <address@hidden>:
> Reading the discussion, I feel like Bernd's objection is based on a  
> perception that ESR wants to *replace* groff -man with DocBook, where  
> I believe he wants to use DocBook as an *interchange* format for all  
> system documentation.

That is correct.  It is why I keep emphasizing the distinction between 
presentation and transfer or interchange formats.

>                      Having looked at DocBook (and worked with XML  
> in general) myself, I believe that interchange (rather than  
> authoring) is its best use.

I agree, though I am personally willing to author in DocBook.

>                         In other words, write your documentation  
> in whatever markup you're comfortable with and translate it to the  
> interchange format.

Here is a slightly expanded version of a diagram I posted back towards
the beginning of the discussion:

+-------------+      
|  man pages  |-----+
+-------------+     |                                +--------------------+    
                    |                           +--->|  HTML on browsers  |    
+-------------+     |                          /     +--------------------+    
|  Texinfo    |-----+                         /                                
+-------------+     |         +-------------+/                                 
                    |-------->| XML-DocBook |                                  
+-------------+     |         +-------------+\                                 
|  asciidoc   |-----+                         \                                
+-------------+     |                          \     +------------------------+
                    |                           +--->| PostScript on printers |
+-------------+     |                                +------------------------+
|  other...   |-----+
+-------------+

The box in the middle is intended to indicate the use of DocBook as a 
common interchange format.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>