This is the mail archive of the docbook@lists.oasis-open.org mailing list for the DocBook project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]

Choice of environment for working with Docbook?


Dear Norm, and all

  This mail is a request for advice: what software do you use to 
  author Docbook? 

I have recently joined the corporate communications division of a 
software company. At the moment, they are using M$ Word for their
documentation, and it is putting them through a fair amount of suffering
(for example a 200-page document including 150 graphics taking up 64Mb 
and causing Word to crawl), not to mention all the other obvious reasons 
for using a proper documentation standard.

I have suggested migrating to Docbook, and they are quite willing to 
consider it. However, they wouldn't recognize Emacs if it bit them on
the ankle (or, more likely, sat on them), so I would like to try a more
WYSIWYG solution, and Arbortext seemed the obvious choice. However, I
was directed to the prices in Euros, and they seem astronomical. I was
thinking 650 EUR to 1200 EUR (that's Euros), but the "DocBook Application"
weighs in at 15000 EUR [1], not counting maintenance. !!!

The documentation we handle consists of User Guides, Developer Guides, 
Functional Specifications, White Papers, online help in Windows HTML
Help format, and context-sensitive help in apps. There'd be about 
twenty of each, and we'd like to publish to paper, HTML, and PDF at 
least. We are not the "Leading reference information publisher" type
of shop that Arbortext features in their News Releases, we just want
to ship proper docs with our products. 

I would be very thankful for any stories or advice from the list. What
do you use, on what scale, and what does it cost? Is it easy (or possible) 
to teach to Word-users?

Regards, 
-- 
jean@mosaicsoftware.com                        . ... .... ///\\oo//\\\
Technical Writer 

[1] http://www.arbortext.com/Europe/EuroPrices/body_europrices.html


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]