Re: Switching to XML

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Tom Lane wrote:
> "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:
>> Secondly the make postgres.xml would be a one time thing.
>
> Agreed, the cost of conversion is one-time ... but it's not small.
> Aside from getting the files themselves converted, there's the effort
> for people to find, install, and learn suitable tools, not to mention
> come up to speed on the differences between xml and sgml.  (I assume
> there are some significant ones, else why are we having this discussion?)
>
> The real problem here is that you've still failed to establish any
> sizable benefit from converting.  As best I can tell at the moment,
> the acceptable options for editing XML will be about the same as they
> are for SGML: emacs, and not a lot else.  I don't really see why I
> should have to start spelling out every closing tag for a no-op like
> that.
>
>             regards, tom lane

In regards to cost of conversion: The osx tool that the makefile
uses to generate postgres.xml has more options available to tweak
the output (not resolve external files into the main file, no
newlines in tags, etc.) After adding a few of those options +
htmltidy, the result is pretty close to the original SGML, barring a
bare newline between <para>'s for example.

The benefit I'm talking about is the ability to do multiple indexes
in one document, which is not possible with DSSSL. In order to do
this, I would have to run the conversion *every time* I wanted to
work on a new release of the manual to bookstores.

David Blewett
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