Re: docbook-tools-discuss: Re: I'm trying to set up docbook-tools...

[Bill Campbell <bill at celestial dot com>]

On Thu, Jul 06, 2000 at 12:21:20PM -0400, Norman Walsh wrote:
...
><sigh/> I'm sorry you found it to be that way. That wasn't the intent.
>Although the bulk of the book is intended as a reference and not a
>how-to, the introductory chapters were supposed to be readable by the
>novice. Can you explain, in any more detail, what you found most
>troubling?

I would have liked to see some more discussion of some topics like how to
build indexes (indices?), cross-referencing, etc. -- i.e. the things one
has to consider when writing books, documentation, and that sort of thing.
The examples on the CD, and the sgml input for the book have been the most
useful things for me.

Another thing I would really like to see are more tools that convert
existing input from ?roff, TeX, and similar markup languages into DocBook
SGML, because this would make it much easier for those of us who are fluent
in these to see how various constructs translate.  I'm pretty well along
now with a set to convert my ?roff -mm and -man files into docbook format,
but it's not going quickly because of my limited skills and knowledge of
docbook (particularly tbl->table).

References are invaluable, but they're not usually something that is used
to initially learn a language.  I've always learned best by seeing concrete
examples, then generalizing from that.  I didn't really understand Backus
Normal Form until I had already learned a lot of ALGOL, and could work
backwards from complex ALGOL code generated by Burroughs FORTRAN compiler
for the B-5500 (really FORTRAN->ALGOL then compile the ALGOL).

Bill
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