Re: Re: HTML documentation system - design and planning

[John M. Dlugosz]

DocBook is not what I'm looking for. It uses SGML markup, and that's just as "bad", if not moreso, than writing in HTML. I don't see any provisions for generating the master tables and index and such, too.

However, I'm wondering if a two-stage approach might work. I can write a simple Perl tool to take an easily-typed markup and convert to formal XML, and that's all it does. I can bang on that to extend when needed, as I need more features. Anything that doesn't fit the mold can be written directly in XML.

Then, another tool reads the XML document and produces the set of HTML pages, including the index and stuff.

—John

[Hanamaki]

DocBook is not what I'm looking for. It uses SGML markup... .However, I'm wondering if a two-stage approach might work. I can write a simple Perl tool to take an easily-typed markup and convert to formal XML, and that's all it does.

Yes, basically DocBook was sgml stuff. Fortunately since Docbook Version 4 there is also a XML-DTD and a XML subset of Docbook called Simplified DocBook.
You could even convert your easily-typed markup to Simple DocBook. I don't want to talk you into some format like DocBook with a rather steep learning curve, but just want to show you an alternative.

Hanamaki