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I tried DocBook a long time ago. Back then the tooling was so terrible that I gave up. However, the XML syntax made sense to me, but was not fun to write. Toda

I tried DocBook a long time ago. Back then the tooling was so terrible that I gave up. However, the XML syntax made sense to me, but was not fun to write. Today I'm using AsciiDoc with AsciiDoctor. The AsciiDoc syntax is as pleasant as MarkDown, but much more powerful and more consistent. AsciiDoc can be converted to DocBook if needed, but I've never needed this possibility, because all I need is PDF and HTML output.

tannhaeuser 7y ago
DocBook is originally an SGML-based vocabulary (I believe DocBook 5 is XML only, with only marginal changes from DocBook 4), so you can always use SGML short references to create your own own little custom Wiki or casual math syntax. Or you can use pandoc to write markdown syntax and convert to DocBook or PDF or whatever. I guess DocBook is mostly for whole books, but the one conference paper I did using DocBook was a pleasant experience; the workflow and results, apart from the PDF produced by LaTex which of course was fantastic-looking, were much better than using LaTeX, publisher-specific LaTeX templates, and in particular latex2html if you want to publish your paper on your home page. Even when using LaTeX for an ACM-published paper (not a math-heavy one, though), I ended up using pandoc for converting LaTeX to HTML because the result of latex2html was unusable, attempting to exactly match two-column layouts, screwing up semantic text order, biblio formatting etc.
ziotom78 7y ago
I find easier to use Asciidoctor to convert my files to Docbook, and then use Pandoc to generate PDFs. Asciidoctor has the ability to produce PDFs, but I find that custom templates in Pandoc are easier to customize and more powerful.
invsblduck 7y ago
I wrote a lot of xml docbook in the early 2000s. I developed dozens editor macros and bindings to make it easier for myself, and I used xslt to generate other formats (mostly html). Seems like I haven't used anything but markdown, rst, and wiki for the last decade+.

tannhaeuser 7y ago

DocBook is originally an SGML-based vocabulary (I believe DocBook 5 is XML only, with only marginal changes from DocBook 4), so you can always use SGML short references to create your own own little custom Wiki or casual math syntax. Or you can use pandoc to write markdown syntax and convert to DocBook or PDF or whatever. I guess DocBook is mostly for whole books, but the one conference paper I did using DocBook was a pleasant experience; the workflow and results, apart from the PDF produced by LaTex which of course was fantastic-looking, were much better than using LaTeX, publisher-specific LaTeX templates, and in particular latex2html if you want to publish your paper on your home page. Even when using LaTeX for an ACM-published paper (not a math-heavy one, though), I ended up using pandoc for converting LaTeX to HTML because the result of latex2html was unusable, attempting to exactly match two-column layouts, screwing up semantic text order, biblio formatting etc.

ziotom78 7y ago

I find easier to use Asciidoctor to convert my files to Docbook, and then use Pandoc to generate PDFs. Asciidoctor has the ability to produce PDFs, but I find that custom templates in Pandoc are easier to customize and more powerful.

invsblduck 7y ago

I wrote a lot of xml docbook in the early 2000s. I developed dozens editor macros and bindings to make it easier for myself, and I used xslt to generate other formats (mostly html). Seems like I haven't used anything but markdown, rst, and wiki for the last decade+.