Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Again: Apache FOP,Docbook: Features / Versions,"complete" Docbook distribution

[Alexander Schatten <alasan at gmx dot net>]

Bob Stayton wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 13, 2002 at 08:57:44PM +0100, Alexander Schatten wrote:
> 
>>This complete "framework" is SO complex to setup, I have never seen 
>>something like this before, especially when there is no documentation 
>>that explains the necessary steps in one document. currently I feel like 
>>playing a text-adventure, getting different types of hints from 
>>different persons.
>>
> 
> Yes, that is the current situation.
> I respectfully suggest that perhaps it would help if you
> could lower your expectations for DocBook XSL/FO processing
> at this point in time.  The FO standard reached final W3C
> Recommendation status only on 15 Oct 2001.  I don't think
> any of the FO processors claim to handle all of it yet.

well, I do understand this. however: unfortunately it seems to me the 
same like in other (open source) projects: microsoft was once blamed for 
their setup program: only "dummies" would use this, bla bla. now even 
linux software authors found it useful to put their software into an rpm 
and (how could this happen *g*) even Cocoon 2 is now easy to install 
without needing to rename libraries and so on.

the same here and in other similar projects: what I feel angry about is, 
that many of these projects suffer on two things:

-- setup and installation
-- documentation

where documentation is really a hard thing, this is really a shame, 
considering how much effort and time is e.g. put into the docbook 
stylesheets... and an expert would need, lets say 20 minutes to explain 
how to setup and install all this stuff together.

what is this time compared to the hours, days and weeks put into the 
rest of the work?

I am rather stubborn and want to get the thing running; but as I 
mentioned before: 98 to 99% of all others take a look at for example 
docbook; play around for an hour, dont get the stuff running, and (this 
is the main point and danger!!) never come back, because the say: "this 
is much too complex and does not work".

the same happened to LaTeX; and even after years, when there were rather 
good distributions (even for windows) you could hear them say: "no, this 
did not work, is too complex, just for freaks..." and continued to use 
Word which is hardly usable for writing a letter, and unusable for 
longer documents.

thats the point, I am sorry.

again my suggestion: If anyone of the experts would help me solving my 
problems as described in the previous mail, I would try to put together 
in installation and setup tutorial. what else could I do?


thanks


Alex