Comments on: Writing Open Source http://blogs.gnome.org/shaunm/2009/06/17/writing-open-source/ Fourteen hours to save the Earth Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:45:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: shaunm http://blogs.gnome.org/shaunm/2009/06/17/writing-open-source/comment-page-1/#comment-194 shaunm Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:37:47 +0000 http://blogs.gnome.org/shaunm/?p=139#comment-194 Jim, that pretty much echoes my thoughts. I don't actively set out to reinvent wheels, but in this case I think Mallard will serve the needs of the Gnome community better. That said, I think there's a lot of room for interoperability, and that's something I'm interested in exploring. And I tend to use the words "symmetric" and "reflexive" when talking about the linking structure. But I'm a mathematician, so I'm weird. Jim, that pretty much echoes my thoughts. I don’t actively set out to reinvent wheels, but in this case I think Mallard will serve the needs of the Gnome community better. That said, I think there’s a lot of room for interoperability, and that’s something I’m interested in exploring.

And I tend to use the words “symmetric” and “reflexive” when talking about the linking structure. But I’m a mathematician, so I’m weird.

]]> By: Jim Campbell http://blogs.gnome.org/shaunm/2009/06/17/writing-open-source/comment-page-1/#comment-192 Jim Campbell Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:49:03 +0000 http://blogs.gnome.org/shaunm/?p=139#comment-192 Mallard does do some pretty cool things, and I love how (1) the markup is simple, (2) new content can be included in the overall structure on the fly, and (3) it has recursive (? not sure if that's the right word) linking. To me, DITA's structure reflects where it came from, IBM. Documentors at IBM have a different set of issues than documentors at GNOME (or Fedora or Ubuntu or Debian or OpenSUSE, for that matter). People at IBM are paid to be smart and paid to deal with a crapload of sysadmin-esque documentation. GNOME documentors generally aren't paid, and, in most cases, they don't have a technical writing background. As I've seen it so far, Mallard seems to strike a balance between a reasonably simple syntax for non-techies to get a hold of, and a reasonable amount of xml-derived power and flexibility. If people need the industrial-strength stuff, they could go to DITA for the big projects and really heavy lifting. And while I'm still keen to learn more about DITA, I don't see why the two projects can't coexist and serve their own purposes. Mallard does do some pretty cool things, and I love how (1) the markup is simple, (2) new content can be included in the overall structure on the fly, and (3) it has recursive (? not sure if that’s the right word) linking.

To me, DITA’s structure reflects where it came from, IBM. Documentors at IBM have a different set of issues than documentors at GNOME (or Fedora or Ubuntu or Debian or OpenSUSE, for that matter). People at IBM are paid to be smart and paid to deal with a crapload of sysadmin-esque documentation. GNOME documentors generally aren’t paid, and, in most cases, they don’t have a technical writing background. As I’ve seen it so far, Mallard seems to strike a balance between a reasonably simple syntax for non-techies to get a hold of, and a reasonable amount of xml-derived power and flexibility.

If people need the industrial-strength stuff, they could go to DITA for the big projects and really heavy lifting. And while I’m still keen to learn more about DITA, I don’t see why the two projects can’t coexist and serve their own purposes.

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