Bob- I tried with OpenOffice, but was did not succeed. It seems to
be for older versions and I could not get it to work with my version
(3.1 on Windows).
Jo, I completely agree with you, to a certain point. It will not
necessarily speed up the process necessarily, but it will make it
more sustainable and flexible. It is easy enough to go from DocBook
into HTML, and not too difficult to go the other way. I am just
thinking in the long term. In addition to documentation, we need to
think about training materials, user guides and so forth. I am not
sure that the Wiki approach necessarily lends itself to developing
these types of materials. I think the Wiki is a great tool for
collaboration. Actually, I think in many places (Zambia for instance
where I am) having access and the ability to check-out
documentation, edit it, and check it back in is actually preferable
to having to be connected and edit it on a Wiki. Internet access is
incredibly expensive, slow and difficult to access here. One of the
reasons why I would prefer the version control system (in addition
to it being version controlled) is that i only need to download what
is new, like the code.
I agree with your point that it raises the bar a bit in terms of
having to get a version control client installed, and learn the
structure of DocBook, but I also feel that as much effort that given
that so much effort has and is being put into the coding of the
application, the documentation of it should be just as rigorous. It
may be more difficult, but it certainly is the better choice in my
mind. DocBook seems to work great for other OpenSource projects,
but I am not going to spend any more effort beginning to develop the
docs, if it is not going to be sustainable.
Knut, Ola, anyone else..thoughts?
