[Typo3-doc] Reason for dropping DocBook...

[Karsten Dambekalns]

Hi.

Jean-Marie Schweizer wrote:
> Since there are supposed to be user friendly editors I can't see how
> that was relevant to the decision.

Hm. It *was* relevant to the discussion. And you don't seem to know those
editors, too, as you write "supposed to". I'd *love* to know about a good,
user friendly (and preferably free) editor (that isn't called emacs[1]).

If there isn't a free editor for such purposes, it *must* be (very)
affordable, otherwise you lock people out.

> Where you part of the project? I only know of the above having been
> involved.

Well, I was at least involved when Robert, Sebastian and Ignmar thought
about it. And I was involved when we talked about the pros and cons of
DocBook, and the need for an easy to use editor, and the possible
toolchain.

The actual decision against DocBook was made later, but I'm sure it was
largely the question of available editors, that made the point.

> Are you talking about DocBook? Where did you experience the complexity
> in it? Why would major open source projects work with DocBook?

Yes, I am talking about DocBook. Just because I did write it in emacs, this
doesn't mean it's not complex.

I wrote "in writing it", and without a good editor, this is hard. Even if
you have an editor, you still have a lot of possibilities to mark up
certain things (lists, filenames, figures, acronyms, ...).

All this can be very confusing, for technically inclinced people, and even
more for people that just want to write documentation about TYPO3 - and
don't want to become a trained technical writer before they can start.

A lot of projects work with DocBook, true. I'd love to work with it more.
Sigh. :/

Regards,
Karsten
[1] I've used emacs for writing DocBook, but still, there must be a
better/easier way...
-- 
Karsten Dambekalns
TYPO3 Association - Active Member
http://association.typo3.org/