Re: [Exim] New list: email-fundamentals

On Fri, Mar 02, 2001 at 06:54:07PM +0100, Phil Pennock wrote:
>
> There's a strong movement towards using SourceForge and DocBook. I have
> no objections to this, if someone else manages it. I'm glad to have
> provided enough to get things started and will probably contribute.

Well, I don't know if a couple of people constitute a large movement,
but at least one of those people is volunteering some time to manage
the SourceForge project and deal with the DocBook stuff.

> My personal view is that plain text with a quality layout is, quite
> simply, an absolute requirement. What I've seen of DocBook-produced
> documents has left something to be desired.

The PDF and HTML output is quite adequate with the tools that I have.
The ASCII text output from the tools that I have does leave a lot to
be desired. I'm still looking into other tools and might end up
creating my own tool to create ASCII text output. Any tools that I
create will be GPL'd, of course.

> I've looked at the output produced by SDF, which Roger recommended,
> and I'm impressed.

I had some trouble viewing the SDF home page so I wasn't able to
investigate SDF properly. It might just have been that my browser
needed a restart though. In some private mail you also suggested
YODL. I haven't seen YODL either, so my defense of DocBook and XML is
based merely on the fact that XML seems to be a the industry trend and
the tools will be continually developed by a large number of people
and companies.

> For now, I'm in favour of sticking with plain text. It's simple, it
> allows me/others to throw stuff around simply without worrying. It can
> be easily made into a more structured format at a later stage.

Yes, plain ASCII text is simple enough. I think that for our target
audience though some nice PDF and HTML output would be highly
desireable. I'm willing though to take a number of
non-DocBook-marked-up submissions and integrate them into the
document.

> I would like someone else to manage a SourceForge setup simply
> because I do not have the time to dedicate to learning my way around
> their systems.

No problem. I've already volunteered for that job.

Jeff