DOCBOOK: docbook vs latex

[Robert Krüger <krueger at signal7 dot de>]

Hi,

I'm currently in the process of deciding which too to use for writing our 
software documentation and have been playing around with docbook for a while. 
The main goal is to have one source of text that is used to generate both 
printable and online documentation. I used to work with latex at university 
but must admit, I haven't touched it in a few years. So far comparing the two 
lead to the following impression.

- latex is by far more comprehensive and better documented (of course, it's 
been around much longer)
- docbook is simpler and therefore easier to use
- docbook-xsl is a very flexible mechanism to generate and customize 
html-output whereas latex2html doesn't seem to be maintained very well
- docbook has some strange concepts (e.g. xrefs to a section resolving to the 
"Sexction x.y" instead of just the number, making it unflexible for no real 
benefit)  
- working with large documents appears to require more thought and 
organization with docbook than with latex

At the moment I would probably go for latex if I had a good translator to HTML 
but on the other hand I feel I still know to little about docbook and might 
be missing something. 
 
I suppose many people have been in my situation and made a decision. can 
anyone share experience?

thanks in advance

robert