Replacing Docbook

Mike Evans mikee at saxicola.co.uk
Fri Aug 28 10:15:58 EDT 2015


On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 11:00:26 +0200
Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be> wrote:

> 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

I just tried docbook2odf with the guide and it does a reasonably good job.  Some imgaes need resizing and there's a "Generated by docbooktoodf" side bar on every page.  A little editing though and it should look OK.

Using GIT with LibreOffice works quite well after installing some python utils.

Mike E 

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