Re: Re: DocBook exporter for Org-mode

[Sebastian Rose <sebastian_rose@gmx.de>]

Baoqiu Cui <cbaoqiu@yahoo.com> writes:

> Sebastian Rose <sebastian_rose@gmx.de> writes:
>>
>> I think we would find hundreds of xslt stylesheets on the web to
>> transform Docbook to virtually any format.
>
> Yes, this is the power and beauty of DocBook.
>
>> Will we loose the features of htmlize.el?
>> I'm not familiar with the Docbook DTD - I know it includes lots of
>> elements. How about time/date types, Programming types (string,
>> variable, class, function....)?
>
> I have not tried it, but it seems that syntax highlighting of source
> code listing can be done.  See this page:
>
>   http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/SyntaxHighlighting.html


Does this know about the fonts and colors I use in Emacs? htmlize.el
does. 


>> Wouldn't it be easier to transform the XHTML to docbook through xslt?
>> The types are not lost, since all types that emacs is aware of, are
>> exported as <span class="type">...</span>.
>
> It should be DocBook -> XHTML if we are talking about general
> publishing.  DocBook has enough features, tags, and more importantly,
> much more available tools.

...and needs an editor like emacs/Org-mode because there is none :-)

but
A) Most of those tools are simply XML related. XHTML is XML.
B) We have those information the *.org file format gives us. XHTML
   export can display all those.
C) Do you really want to tell a windows user to setup a complete SGML
   system, just to publish to PDF or XHTML?


It's true: Docbook is more general in sense of more non-org-users
might know Docbook, than Orgs XHTML export format.

But for sure more non-org-users will understand the XHTML, than the
Docbook.


I hihgly apreciate the support of Docbook and your effort. Yet, I think
I don't want to publish XHTML through Docbook.

Right now, I have a bunch of org-files, and I get a bunch of XHTML files
as output. Nothing else. No special setup required, no xslt stylesheets,
no FO or saxon.jar in $CLASSPATH (how many users know the contents of
his $CLASSPATH ?), xsltproc, xslt stylesheets, no waiting for a
Java-Application (I prefer C/C++ Tools), no waisted disk space, no
external dependencies.

We can't force end users to use Docbook to get XHTML. Java is _not_ part
of emacs, xsltproc is not part of emacs either (most of this is true for
LaTeX).

The XHTML export _is_ part of emacs and has _no_ external
dependencies. It's results are pages displayed in every browser, even
text browsers.

Docbook is displayed correctly in some of those browsers but only in
conjunction with a stylesheet. But not enough to publish Docbook and
your done. That's why Docbook is hardly ever met in the wild. It's badly
supported by the tools for end users and as complicated to setup, use
and transform as LaTeX (but LaTeX _is_ met in a lot in the wild).



Please don't get me wrong. I really think supporting Docbook is a big
step. I suddenly would have a cool Docbook editor on all the systems I
work on! I'm always happy to see people making such efforts as you
did. And I hope, this will bring more users to emacs/Org-mode too.




Best regards,

-- 
Sebastian Rose, EMMA STIL - mediendesign, Niemeyerstr.6, 30449 Hannover
Tel.:  +49 (0)511 - 36 58 472
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