Re: A true beginner's needs.

[Jean-Xavier LOTTHE <mg068-3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 18:19 10/06/97 +0200, Tanneguy wrote:

>I am interested in showing to SGML-owners the different
>approaches to paper production, from an organization point of view.
>
>To businessmen, the properties of the composed document (revisable or
>not as a standalone document, for example) can be as important as
>the formatting prowess of such or such composer.


These 'approaches to paper production' and 'properties' remain quite obscur
and conceptual as far as I understand your point. I mean, this is such a
vast scope you're speaking about that I wouldn't know what to start with.
Even the ability to revise a part of a document as a standalone subdocument
is either very simple as a concept or really huge as a scope for implementation.

Yet, I think you made an interesting point. If we want to get DSSSL
widespread, let us *show* what can be achieved with it ! We wrote, here in
the list, about DSSSL documentation. So far so good. The initiative is
wonderful as well as needed and I would be delighted to contribute in some way.

This documentation answers one part of the beginner's guide. The insider's
part would I say, i.e. the programmer's point of view. We consider the
reader as being already interested or curious. Why would anyone be
interested in spending valuable time to learn something without knowing what
it's useful for. I can't believe it would only be because of a sort of holy
quest for knowledge.

Hence the businessman's remark: 'Tell me no words ! Just show me what I
would pay for'.
And that is also a question we could ask to ourselves: Why do we invest our
valuable time in learning DSSSL ? What do we *substantially* intend to use
DSSSL for ? What cannot be done with other solutions that can be achieved
using DSSSL ? Do we only use Jade because (thanks to James) it's free ?


Whereas this discussion surely already took place when it was decided to
developp DSSSL, I think some hard facts or simple case studies could
illustrate our goals and the meaning of our efforts. I see this as a useful
and enlightening possible introduction for our DSSSL documentation.



>DSSSL is very interesting as far as this issue is concerned,
>yet I have not the time at the moment to reach the level
>required to write a simple, comprehensive example.

I would be happy to give you some help. It would certainly help me to better
encompass the possible uses of a structured documentation system. It could
also be used as introductory demos in our DSSSL documentation.
However, as stated above, some very basic, practical and down to hearth
topics should be selected first. What are the real needs of the businessmen
you meet ? Could you just figure out and illustrate a functional case for
revisability, for example ? This would help us out of developping something
too intricate  and surely lead to reduce the amount of time needed to make
it work.


That'll be all for tonight. It's high time to go to bed.

Xavier


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