draft notice text

[Karsten Wade]

On Sat, 2004-09-18 at 12:55, Dave Pawson wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-09-18 at 19:06, Karsten Wade wrote:
> > On Sat, 2004-09-18 at 05:24, Dave Pawson wrote:
> > 
> > > What  rationale is there for remaining with the SGML toolchain?
> > 
> > Ironically, the same reason that businesses worldwide stick with
> > old-but-working systems, where working == we hacked it to work well
> > enough to ship.
> > 
> > For the time to produce Enterprise Linux 4, we didn't have enough cycles
> > to do the R&D ourselves and start writing our guides for the next
> > release.  There are significant cross-team constraints, such as having
> > percentages of guides string and code frozen for the translation team to
> > work on.
> I gather you're speaking for rhel Karsten?

Never let it be said that I speak for RHEL ... :) ... I speak for myself
only, unless otherwise stated.

> I'm asking about fc2,3.

I never would have guessed that.

Are you asking, "What rationale is there for Fedora to use the SGML
toolchain?"?

Because the answer is, what are you talking about?, Fedora is not using
the SGML toolchain.

> > Frankly, it was pretty daunting to imagine doing the XML toolchain all
> > ourselves. 
> It was done for you, open src, 5 years ago.

[snip]
> I made those decisions in 99. Why has it taken so long for rh to review
> them? Are they really so 'big blue bound'?

I wasn't around during all that time, so I can't speak for decisions
made before I was part of the team.

My explanation of how a company can get locked into using an aging
system because of the difficulty of change should be explanation
enough.  It is a common enough occurrence.

If you don't understand the example, perhaps it's because you haven't
experienced it yet?  It's far easier for an individual to change systems
than for a company.

Anyway, the point is no longer moot, since it turns out you were not
asking me about RHEL.

> > That means I'm writing 100% in XML, as soon as I take the few hours to
> > convert my existing work from SGML. :-)
> Take a look at James Clarks sx. It works.

I will, thanks; that may help with existing SGML guides.  Still, we've
been trying to follow XML practices, and in many cases we can get away
with just changing the DOCTYPE.  Most of the work I have to do is around
directory structure and Makefiles, I reckon.

> I see no call for pdf in fc2? So fop shouldn't be a blocker,
> though its probably more than good  enough for our use should pdf be
> wanted.

PDF is wanted.

I'm not personally bound to the dead tree method of documenting, but
many of our readers are.  An Installation Guide, for example, is a
wonderful thing to be printed in front of you when you are doing your
first Fedora Core install.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE, Tech Writer
a lemon is just a melon in disguise
http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
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