Hi Robert, I thought of this thread when I spotted this article in O'Reilly Radar: http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/02/future-of-the-book.html They mention XMLMind, ASCIIDoc and Oxygen as recommended tools for XML/DocBook editing. Andrew. On 2011-02-16, at 7:08 AM, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > is anyone out there using a (preferably xml/docbook-based) > publishing toolchain for publishing books, manuals or courseware that > runs on Linux? > > i've got a number of old courses, and more i want to write, and i > want to update my publishing toolchain. that i want to use some form > of xml/docbook is pretty much a no-brainer since that will give me the > most flexibility in terms of output rendering, but there are a number > of choices even there, so i was wondering if anyone on this list is > using some type of toolchain like that for regular production use at > their place. > > the first option is to use straight docbook, which will definitely > work but is kind of verbose since you typically need to type in those > overly long tags. > > one variation on that is that, way back when, i wrote a pre-docbook > processing step that used an XSLT processor (xsltproc) that let me add > a bunch of specific shorter tags (like <p> -> <para> and so on), then > i ran *my* original content through what's called an "identity > transform" that simply replaced my shortcuts with the proper docbook > tags. (and, no, it's not as simple as you think.) so that gave me > the ability to use proper docbook but save a lot of typing by sneaking > in my handy little transform at the beginning. > > yet another option is publican -- https://fedorahosted.org/publican/ > -- which is a packaged docbook/xml toolchain that lets you do neat > things like branding your documents. so it hides a lot of the grunt > work. i'm just checking it out, and if anyone else is using it, i'd > be interested in knowing what you think of it. > > the final option that i just ran across is "slacker's docbook," > http://slackerdoc.tigris.org/. i found this only because i just > finished pre-pub reviewing the next edition of this book: > > http://www.amazon.ca/Introduction-Design-Patterns-Qt/dp/0131879057/ > > and noticed that the authors stated they'd written the whole thing > using that reduced form of docbook, which conveniently adds a whole > bunch of time-saving features that are normally a bit of a pain with > regular docbook. so that's now an option as well. > > so ... any opinions? > > rday > > p.s. i could almost make a talk out of this, couldn't i? :-) > > -- > > ======================================================================== > Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA > http://crashcourse.ca > > Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday > LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday > ======================================================================== > _______________________________________________ > Linux mailing list > Linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca > http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/linux