Re: correction on command name

[Martin WHEELER <mwheeler@startext.co.uk>]

On 26 Jun 2000, Taketoshi Sano wrote:

-- a very succinct and lucid resume of many of the confusingly named
DTD processing and conversion tools encountered by LDP authors.

Thank you for the bilan.  It is very good; timely; and above all,
useful.  I would like to suggest that this text form the basis of, or 
go into, an LDP Authoring FAQ, as a permanent reference for all of us.

> I don't wish to start a flame

No flame started.  And several useful facts noted.

Please don't get me wrong, anyone.  I'm NOT against a multiplicity of
SGML DTDs.  I welcome them.  (I have 168+ installed on this machine,
and actually actively use about a dozen of them.  The rest?  They just
sort of accumulated in dark corners somehow :)

I *am* against packages so named that on a cursory glance they appear to
be general-purpose tools; yet which on detailed inspection prove to be
usable with only *one* DTD, with no facility to swap other DTDs in or
out of the package.  (And I forgot to thank you Taketoshi, when you
renamed one of these offending packages a few weeks ago.  I meant
to.  Allow me to do that now.)

Example:

> The tool for qwertz DTD written by Thomas F. Gordon is included in 
> sgml2latex-format.1.4.tar.gz

...so I'd much rather it were called "qwertz2latex-format.1.4.tar.gz",
even if the command used is a non-offensive: "format".
Do you get my point?

> (and the name of the DTD is "qwertz", not "qwertzy".)

My mistake.  Sorry -- I've only ever used this DTD for markup once, and
that was only to check that it worked.  (For proof-of-concept and
beginners' training work, I now use the TEI barebones DTD (bb.dtd).)
I was quoting from memory without bothering to look up the name.  :(


>   | Format allows LaTeX documents to be created using powerful and
>   | comfortable SGML editors, such as Author/Editor

-- which IIRC allows various DTDs to be used, interchangeably.

>   The names for commands such as "sgml2..." was
> introduced at version 1.4 of linuxdoc-sgml (17 October 1995).

...which would be about when smoke started to pour from my nostrils :)


> SGMLtools-Lite has the command to process the DocBook DTD sgml source,
> and its name is "sgmltools".  Do you have complaints against that name ?

Unfortunately, yes, if it's not *truly* SGML generic.
(And then what happens if an author wishes to use not-yet-released test
versions of an improved DocBook DTD with it, or XML docbk, or ...)

> (sgmltools can be used to convert the SGML source from the LinuxDoc DTD
> into the DocBook DTD, so it is not the specific to ONE DTD precisely.)

'LinuxDocBooktools' is hideously clumsy -- but far more accurate.
I just don't like the imprecision in the way the expression 'sgml' is
bandied about.  It assumes authors are using only ONE DTD (qwertz, or
xfree86, or debiandoc, or whatever) in a restricted editing
environment.  If, like me, they have several installed and in use at any
one moment, "sgml-" is a pretty meaningless prefix.  (It begs the
question: "*Which* bloody sgml?")  So the name hinders rather than
helps.


> XFree86 has used their own linuxdoc-based DTD which is called as xfree86.dtd.
> Their processing tools originates in the tools for the FreeBSD Documentation
> Project, and the name of the command is "sgmlfmt"

Ooops!  Should be "xfree86fmt", in my book :)


> The FreeBSD community had created and used their own linuxdoc-based dtd.
> Their names are freebsd-1.0.dtd and freebsd-1.1.dtd.

So do they call *their* toolset "freebsdtools" or "sgmltools"?  ;)


> BTW, Marc Andre Selig wrote on sgmltools-lite-discuss:

Err ... sorry to keep on banging on the same old drum, but why isn't
this known as "docbooktools-lite"?

> Debian provides also the packages for sgmltools-2 and cygnus-stylesheets 
> with other required packages for the coming next release, aka potato.

I *DO* wish someone would rename this "DocBooktools-2" -- or give
everything in the package the ability to use *any* chosen DTD.  <SIGH>

msw
-- 
Martin Wheeler         -         StarTEXT - Glastonbury - BA6 9PH - England
[1] mwheeler@startext.co.uk                      http://www.startext.co.uk/
[2] mwheeler@startext.f9.co.uk


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