Re: [docbook-apps] Master thesis in DocBook

[Sean Wheller <sean at enbaya dot co dot za>]

On Wednesday 14 April 2004 14:02, Per Zetterlund wrote:
> I've recently started working on my master thesis. It'll be a report
> containing
> about 70 pages with figures, images and equations. Is it any use trying
> to use
> DocBook to write it? Is there tools of enough high quality to make
> printable PDFs with figures (SVG), images (JPEG, PNG) and equations
> (MathML)? Does anyone on the list have experience in writing thesises (or
> similar) in DocBook?

Peter,

Others and myself have experience in writing a complete books with literally 
hundreds of pages using Docbook. So there is absolutely no problem in 
producing the kind of work you will do using the formats mentioned.

However, depending on your level of expertise and knowledge of XML, if you are 
just starting out with Docbook please do take into consideration that your 
learning curve may be steep and you may therefore be inclined to opt for a 
more traditional solution.

The advancement of structural editors, those that provide an editing 
environment that is near or comparable to using a traditional wordprocessor 
has been great in the last few years. However, depending on complexity, you 
may find that you will need to revert to using a source view editor in order 
to accomplish the task of including content types like SVG and MathML in to 
your manuscript.

Certainly, it is my experience that while Docbook is now mature enough to 
handle most publishing requirements, authors are still required to sometimes 
have a deep knowledge of the XML applications they are working with and 
should be adapt to working with a number of software applications and 
processing tools if their objective includes a reasonable level of 
complexity. The more complex the manuscript the greater you will find the 
number of applications and tools you will use.

On the whole, using Docbook for a thesis in not unrealistic, especially with 
the terrific support provided by the community which is logged in the 
mail-archives.

Good luck.

Hope this helps,

-- 
Sean Wheller


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