Re: sidebar in docbook

[Patrice Dumas]

On Fri, Apr 05, 2013 at 10:33:12PM +0000, Karl Berry wrote:
> 
> For example, I am underwhelmed by this.  Texinfo's feature of
> @unnumbered seems both simpler and more general.  I see no good reason
> to add more commands.  (Aside: @top is logically unnecessary too, was
> just added as a kludge for C makeinfo (like so much else), for that
> matter, but never mind.)  There are plenty more such prefatory sections
> that could be added.  I see no reason to bother.
> 
> What I *can* imagine is mapping @node Preface (controlled by a variable,
> naturally) to Docbook <preface>, etc.

That would certainly be doable, and in line with the current handling of
@quotation that maps to docbook elements if it has some specific arguments.

>     DocBook is something of the prevailing standard for
>     machine-processable documentation; e.g. the LinuxDoc project
> 
> Unconvinced :).  You could say the same for Texinfo.  I don't doubt that
> there are many pages of proprietary documentation in Docbook, since
> proprietary publishers love verbose, unreadable, unwritable XML, but
> useful free documentation?  Not so sure.

The kde and gnome applications documentation is in docbook too if I
remember well.  My gut feeling is that there is more docummentation in
DocBook, but that documentation for 'low level' building blocks 
applications/libraries... is more often in Texinfo, and not only because 
of GNU, also because the Texinfo markup is more appealing to hackers as 
opposed to specialized documentation writers.

-- 
Pat