Replacing Docbook

[Geert Janssens]

On Friday 28 August 2015 09:45:44 John Ralls wrote:
> > On Aug 28, 2015, at 9:03 AM, Geert Janssens
> > <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be> wrote:
> > 
> > Thanks for the heads up. That's certainly an interesting opportunity
> > to check out. On the other hand I wonder if markdown has enough
> > structure enforcement (for example to ensure contributors will
> > really use header markup instead of bold/underline where needed). I
> > do agree that docbook xml is a big hurdle for newcomers and even
> > not really appealing to more experienced people. So if we can find
> > a good middleground I'd be all for it.
> > 
> > Here's another option I have been pondering for a while, and just
> > now took the time to do some minimal research on:
> > http://blog.riemann.cc/2013/04/23/versioning-of-openoffice-libreoff
> > ice-documents-using-git/#comment-2209333934
> > <http://blog.riemann.cc/2013/04/23/versioning-of-openoffice-libreof
> > fice-documents-using-git/#comment-2209333934>
> > 
> > Move away from docbook completely and instead save our documents in
> > flat odt. Advantages: - This is a format that's easy to store and
> > manage in git.
> > - There is a free wysiwyg editor that's universally available:
> > libreoffice. Most people learn how to use it relatively quickly as
> > most of them have used word processors before. - libreoffice can
> > export to pdf. I even installed a plugin once to convert odt to
> > epub, which worked reasonably well. - libreoffice can also be used
> > headless for document conversion so it can be integrated in
> > automated build processes. - in theory libreoffice can even export
> > to html (though I have no idea of the quality).
> I’ve used libre/openoffice to create html. It works reasonably well.
> Calibre’s docs say it can ingest ODT, which will take care of the
> ebook and mobi outputs.
> 
> http://open.comsultia.com/docbook2odf/about
> <http://open.comsultia.com/docbook2odf/about> looks like the
> least-obsolete way to convert from DocBook to ODT. Its SVN repo was
> last updated in 2009 but our DocBook version is pretty old too so it
> will probably work OK.
> 
> Any disadvantages?
> 
The first one is mentioned in a comment of the blog post I referred to: libreoffice saves soft 
page breaks. These tend to all shift up and down when making edits. So the diffs will be 
slightly cluttered. We may be able to fix these by simply filtering them out before committing, 
however that would again mean a manual action for the contributor. We may also just decide 
to live with them.

That's the only disadvantage I'm currently aware of. A trial run will likely give us more insight 
and in worst case reveal potential show-stoppers.

Geert