text formatting tools.

[Murray Stokely]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 12:47 PM, Chuck Robey <chuckr at telenix.org> wrote:
>> On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Chuck Robey <chuckr at telenix.org> wrote:
>>> You said that most written things are hierarchical.  Sorry, I strongly disagree,
>>
>> I disagree also.  Nobody on this thread said that except you.  Your
>> entire response is based on this significant mis-quote.
>
> Yeah, I did a fubar, and in that sentence, inverted things by droppig the word
> "not".  My comments were all directed towards the fact that xml is (and
> enforces) a hierarchical approach to writing, and that (outside of tech manuals
> and web pages) most written things aren't hierarchical in nature.

Your first mail attacked the use of XML for the FreeBSD Handbook, and
that is the point to which I replied.  You then backed off completely
from that statement and have acknowledged that it has advantages for
technical documentation and the Handbook.

There is very little disagreement after you made those concessions.  I
feel like I'm in the Monty Python skit and you are so dead set about
getting into an argument that you are misquoting and finding
conspiracies of Microsoft and XML vendors to rail against.

> top, dropping (once) the word "non".  Outside of your distortion, that's your
> whole argument?

There is little to argue since you backed away from the points of your
first mail that I disagreed with.  Your second mail seems to agree
with the position of my first mail : xml provides a lot of advantages
for the handbook.  I have argued nothing more and nothing less -- your
general attack on XML went too far and ignored the obvious advantages
and I called you on that.  Sure there are specific cases when XML is
lacking, and I know plenty of them, but nobody has taken the position
that XML is always the best tool for the job.

>> You have moved the
>> discussion from a hierarchy of chapters, sections, and paragraphs into
>> one involving "hierarchical database approaches".
>
>Wow, that bothers me, it's a direct distortion.  I have posted on this twice.
>In the first one, I never even mentioned the terms Chapters, sections, or
>paragraphs, and in the second, I only mentioned chapters in passing, to show
>that their use in most printed matter was merely to allow easier topic access,

We both talked past each other on this point.  You didn't define your
hierarchical database approache complaint very well, so I provided the
simplified case of chapters, sections, and paragarphs and talked about
that.  It doesn't matter.  I don't think I disagree with what you are
saying, I'm just not sure because you didn't define your objections to
the database nature very well, and then you changed your argument to
only be about non-technical manuals, when I was only arguing about its
benefits for technical manuals.  So no obvious disagreement here.

> Could we move this BACK to the topic of groff versus xml?

Why not emacs vs vi while we are at it?  What is the point of that?
They are different tools for different jobs.

You have been involved in the freebsd community for over a decade.
What is the point of a holy war argument like this?  Why not pick up
groff and go fix some freebsd man pages?

                  - Murray