Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Best tool for DocBook

[Bob McIlvride <robert at cogent dot ca>]

Dave Pawson wrote:
> At 14:54 22/08/2001 -0500, Dennis Grace wrote:

> I.e. take a block of stuff and gradually make it
> conformant to a DTD.

Yeah, I do that a lot, too.  I'm surprised you haven't been using macros
to speed up the task.  For example, if you have a chunk of regularly
formatted text to be turned into a list, you can set up the empty list
with the correct markup and put all the text below it, one item per
line.  Then you record a macro where you copy the empty listitem, paste
it below, go to the first line of the text, copy it, and paste it into
the first listitem markup, go back to your starting point and delete the
extra line.  Then run the macro for all list items.  This is a simple
example.  You can do whole sets of reference pages or whatever by
following the same principle.  

It may seem like extra work for 3 or 4 items, but if you have a couple
dozen, or if you do the same kind of markup many times, it saves a huge
amount of time.  Since each situation is a little different, and they're
so easy to make, I usually don't bother saving macros.  My criteria for
when to do a macro, is any time you are going to have to do the same
thing 6 times or more.  Once you get used to doing them, it becomes
second nature.  Give it shot. :-)

-- 
Cheerio!

Bob

---------------------------------------
Robert McIlvride (robert@cogent.ca)
Cogent Real-Time Systems (www.cogent.ca)

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