RE: Help with Docbook (an alternative)

Subject: RE: Help with Docbook (an alternative)
From: "Mark Baker" <mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 14:57:52 -0400


> I'm curious to know which general advantages you are taking about.
>
> The main advantages I see are:
> Seperate content and presentation.
> Offer search engines based on semantics.
> Recycle content for one or many media.
> Include metadata in content.

All these are advantages that a particular application of XML might exhibit,
or might not, depending on how it was designed.

The general advantages of XML are:

* Easy to define new tagging languages
* Easy to parse and validate
* Easier to build processing tools because pre-built parses and domain
specific programming languages are available.
* Widespread familiarity with the syntax eases learning of specific
solutions.

> I do not feel I loose any of these with DITA, moreover because my
> DTD can be updated in this architecture, I feel I gain
> flexibility. As I just started with it, maybe I am missing an
> important point!?

DITA is not a DTD. It is a system for creating new DTD's by specializing
existing ones. This allows you to use DITA aware processing application
written for the base DTD to process you specialized DTD (though it will
processes it as if it were the base DTD). You can also write processing
applications that borrow processing code from existing applications,
provided both are DITA aware, both are written in XSLT, and both are in the
same specialization hierarchy.

When you commit to DITA, therefore, you are committing to a specific
processing model which may or may not suit your needs.

---
Mark Baker
Stilo Corporation
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Phone: 613-745-4242, Fax: 613-745-5560
Email mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com
Web: http://www.stilo.com

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References:
RE: Help with Docbook (an alternative): From: France Baril

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