Re: Switching to XML

On Sun, 2006-12-10 at 19:07 +0100, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > The only thing I see is that you don't want to move because all the
> > tools that are available for docbook sgml are also available for
> > docbook xml.
>
> Link posted by David Blewett:
> http://groups.google.com/group/pgsql.docs/browse_thread/thread/37ff3a011bb705d7

Per this link Peter you cite:
"""
- Marked sections don't work anymore; would need to use DocBook-specific
profiling mechanism, which isn't all that elegant.

- More typing: Things like <abc>foo</> and other abbreviations won't
work anymore; all attributes would need to be quoted, etc.

- doc/src/sgml/*.sgml will look silly for filenames.

- Someone would need to do the conversion. I understand that the
French
translation team might have patches available.

So that is it. In my mind, there is no clear winner, but if someone has
a concrete need for XML, I don't see a problem with it.
"""

Your first disadvantage I can not comment on.

Your second disadvantage is fixed with any reasonable editor including
emacs.

Your third comment is a filename change.

Your fourth is resolved, we have the conversion per make postgres.xml.
We could even reasonably break it all out again.

I would add to advantages that:

1. We wouldn't have to have this discussion every six months :)

2. It will make life easier for regional projects as they are already
going through the pain of moving to XML for each release.

3. It would help some sub projects including the printed documentation
project that Blewitt and I are working on because we could submit our
patches as XML directly back to the community.

Lastly: There are several who have mentioned a concrete need. Is the
need solved with the existing tools? Yes, but not without extra steps.

So I would ask that you either give us further reason why you don't want
to move to XML or honor what you say above, in that you don't have a
problem with it.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

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