On Wed, 11 Nov 1998, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> I want to welcome you, Martin. It's always nice to get help in an enormous
> task that'll probably never be finished.
Well, thanks for the welcome, Marcus.
As for the enormity of the task -- I've always been a sucker for lost
causes ;-)
But primarily, I'm a *reader* (always have been) -- I'm one of those
weirdoes who actually reads the documentation when and where provided --
so my interest in Debian documentation may be considered a little bit
selfish. If it ain't there to be read, I suppose I'll have to get up off
my backside and help provide it. The least I can do is to give a hand to
others who've already made a greater effort than I.
> Great! As a non-native english speaker, I learn by doing, and we should
> certainly make sure our texts are exemplary.
Yes. I for one really appreciate the enormous efforts made globally by
non-native English speakers to provide documentation for their
contribution to the GNU/Linux effort. I feel that quite often, English
speakers just take it for granted that everyone else will, and can, work
in English (US or UK variant -- usually US) without considering the
backbreaking effort it can entail; and that due appreciation is hardly
ever (if at all) expressed. So those of us who can give that last little
bit of extra polish, almost have a duty to do so.
> You hit the nail on the head!
(Probably because I did all my university education and fifteen years
postgrad. work in French, after having been brought up entirely to
consider English as my mother-tongue; so I've got first-hand experience
of what it's like -- the other way round, as it were.)
> > even tho' my preferred DTD is TEI
-- Text Encoding for Interchange (formerly Text Encoding Initiative) --
the "standard" used for scholarly/academic text markup.
<see: http://www-tei.uic.edu/orgs/tei/ for TEI main index page>
TEI markup comes in two levels - TEI Lite, and full TEI (P3)
<see: http://www-tei.uic.edu/orgs/tei/lite/ for TEI Lite>
http://www-tei.uic.edu/orgs/tei/p3/ for TEI P3>
There is also a third level -- "baby" TEI (bb -- stands for 'barebones',
actually) for teaching/early learning purposes; not to be taken as a
serious practical DTD at all, but moderately useful for getting your head
round the concept of TEI if you're a complete beginner
<see: http://www-tei.uic.edu/orgs/tei/intros/ >
These have evolved because TEI is *not* a lightweight concept --
simply expressed, it allows you to use a core set of tags, to
which you can add from specialist libraries, according to the needs of
the text(s) you're marking up. This makes for a humongous set of DTDs to
find your way around. Probably the best way to get a feel for it is to
grab yourself a copy of (x)emacs + psgml, make sure your catalog entry
points to all the DTDs in the right places, mark up your text, then play
with whichever of the tei2<format> converters you want to put your markup
through.
Boris Tobotras has put together a TEItools package, giving access to
converters such as tei2latex, tei2html, tei2ps, tei2pdf, tei2rtf, etc.
<see: http://xtalk.price.ru/SGML/TEItools/ >
> > tech-doc, not docbook
-- my own set of pick'n'mix tags for TEI; although I do understand the
attractiveness of the Davenport Group's DTD (particularly as it is used by
O'Reilly). Another one you might be interested in is the Addison-Wesley
DTD (although, like TEI, I think you'll find you can freely copy it, but
not distribute it.)
There is actually a TEI CD available, with all the relevant stuff on it.
There should be a pointer to it from the TEI pages somewhere.
> I was amazed by the amount of
> computer power used for linguistic research.
So now you know why I have an interest in Beowulf architectures!
> Maybe you are interested in doc-base.
Yes -- but I've too much on at the moment to get involved with much else.
Always ready to comment on specifics though.
Cheers,
Martin
--
Martin Wheeler - StarTEXT, Glastonbury, Somerset, England - BA6 9PH
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.startext.co.uk/
