Re: [gentoo-dev] {Guide,Project,Foo}XML too confusing for many devs?

[Catalin Zamfir Alexandru]

On Monday 26 March 2007 15:05, Alec Warner wrote:
> First off, this is not a discussion on why XML sucks, or why we shouldn't
> be using XML or anything like that.  This is not a discussion about what
> we should be using instead of XML.  This is a discussion about using XML
> for our webpages.
>
> Many projects have old and nasty webpages.  This has been a problem within
> gentoo since before I arrived and probably has been a problem since we
> started having webpages.  One of the issues I wish to address is whether
> or not writing webpages in XML (Guide or Project or something_else) is
> just too much of a barrier for many people.  I've personally always been
> pretty much a 'copy something that works and edit the bits I need' kind of
> a guy.  There is certainly a large body of work to steal^H^H^H^H^Hcopy
> from.  However when something you are working on doesn't fit inside of
> something that has already been done it becomes very difficult to make it
> 'fit' into our existing XML structure.
>
> This forces you to either ask for help from the masters of GuideXML (aka
> the Docs team) or try and figure out how the hell to write the xsl and
> dtd's yourself, or give up.  Personally I think most people end up at the
> latter case (the giving up one).  I know developers that won't even touch
> any webpages at all; I can only assume that they just hate XML long time
> and find the whole issue of writing pages complicated and burdoning.
>
> So this is getting pretty long winded; my basic question is do you as a
> developer find writing web pages to be confusing or difficult?  Is there
> not a good tutorial for learning our webpage XML syntax?  Do you find that
> you bump up against restrictions in the DTD or other problems that prevent
> you from expressing yourself properly?  Do you have any idea how to
> actually go about extending GuideXML (or the other XML's we provide)  Have
> you ever tried?  Could we improve training with regards to any of this?
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Alec

It ain't my business to talk on XML, as I'm not a Gentoo Web Developer, but 
personally I think that XML is one of the easiest SGMLs to learn, in 
comparison to the strict HTML 4.01, MathML or any other.

Plus, XML allows for really good administration for the content and separates 
between code and content. Thus, the content contained in XML can be exported 
to about any other form of representation. Some PHP and XML for rendering 
pages would be just "the bomb" at maintaining a good gentoo.org website. 
That's my opinion ...