From: cg@evrl.xs4all.nl (Cees de Groot)
Subject: SGML-Tools statement of direction - LDP authors please read!
Date: Fri,  6 Mar 1998 08:49:24 GMT

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SGML-Tools, currently in its 1.0 incarnation, is currently the tool of
choice for many parts of the Linux Documentation Project, especially
for HowTo's. For this purpose, it (and its predecessor Linuxdoc-SGML)
has been functioning fairly well.

However, there has been constant pressure to get SGML-Tools more into
the mainstream of SGML text processing, to add functionality, to 
overhaul the sgmltool Document Type Definition, etcetera. This lead
to long and interesting discussions on the SGML-Tools mailing list,
but didn't really move us forward in terms of SGML-Tools functionality.

We have come to the conclusion that maintaining a quality document type
definition is very hard, and have therefore decided to migrate SGML-Tools
(and therefore the LDP) to a new document type definition, DocBook. This
is a DTD developed by professionals and gaining wide acceptance in the
industry. Among others, it will make it very easy to incorporate LDP
documents into books (collections of manpages, howto documents, etcetera). 
Information on the DocBook DTD can be found under the URL 
<http://www.ora.com/davenport>;.

What does this mean to the average LDP author? It means that there will
be a point in time where he/she needs to make a conversion of linuxdoc.dtd
documents to DocBook:

- - At the moment, SGML-Tools 1.0.5 is the productive version. People should
  upgrade from Linuxdoc-SGML and older SGML-Tools versions to this release
  (or a newer one) in order to make sure that their documents are compatible
  with the current DTD;
- - We're now starting SGML-Tools 1.1 development, which will be a hacker
  version. Later versions will likely be stable enough to give early
  adopters an early transition chance; 
- - Hopefully 98Q3, SGML-Tools 2.0 will be released. This version will not
  support linuxdoc.dtd anymore, but will have an automated conversion
  tool from linuxdoc.dtd to DocBook. Authors should use 2.0 in order
  to migrate their documents;
- - 6 months after SGML-Tools 2.0 release, support for SGML-Tools 1.0 
  will be dropped. LDP authors should have converted their documents
  by then; the SGML-Tools team will consider linuxdoc.dtd obsolete
  from then on.

I hope that everyone can live with the (relatively minor) amount of work
this will bring; we are convinved that SGML-Tools will better serve the
LDP and other documentation projects after the transition, so we think
it's worth the trouble.

If you're interested in SGML-Tools, visit the homepage:
<http://pobox.com/~cg/sgmltools>;, which also has information on subscribing
to the mailing list.

Regards,

Cees de Groot
SGML-Tools maintainer.
- -- 
Cees de Groot               http://pobox.com/~cg         <cg@pobox.com>
SGML-Tools Maintainer       http://pobox.com/~cg/sgmltools



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