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I'm just starting to investigate this myself, so I don't claim to be
an expert by any means. But from what I know, XHTML is simply HTML
that follows the "rules" of XML (tags are case sensitive, all tags
must be closed, etc.). If you can do what you need to do with HTML,
then fine, that's all you need.
But if you want to be able to do any of the following, you're going to
want to use XML.
-Structure your documents (for example if you want to say that a
procedure should include a heading, an introductory paragraph,
prerequities, a context, and numbered steps)
-Enforce the structure of your documents against your DTD
-Use the structure of your documents to create resuable chunks of content
-Include metadata (data about the data) to help you find and reuse those chunks
-Use metadata to improve the ability of your users to search for data
And that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure someone else will
chime in and include something I've forgotten.
Julie Stickler
On 1/24/06, Rebecca Hopkins <rebecca_hopkins -at- comcast -dot- net> wrote:
> Folks,
>
> I'm looking at moving to an XML editing system for online help.
>
> The unfriendly part of this idea is the schema / DTD. I think I can do everything I need to do using the XHTML DTD.
>
> - Are there advantages with going with DITA or docbook that may outweigh the apparent ease of sticking with the more familiar XHTML?
>
> - I'm a sole writer, but wonder if anybody has any experience with developers having ideas about how it should be done - if you've made a similar decision with the writer and the developer in mind. We might, at some point in the far future, do a Spanish translation, or some small amount of on-the-fly customized doc, but not soon.
>
> -----
> Rebecca
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