Re: [tlug] Docbook XML for documenting database tables

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Josh" == Josh Glover <jmglov@example.com> writes:

    Josh> Docbook experts (this means you, Smith!), I would like to
    Josh> use Docbook to document some MySQL database tables.

Into "M" are you?  *ML is for machines, Docbook included.  Even LISP
is more readable and writable (not surprising, since XML is just LISP
with VERY verbose parentheses and UTF-8 encoding by default).

    Josh> It seems that if I do it right, not only can I generate HTML
    Josh> documentation from it, but also the actual SQL statements to
    Josh> create the tables, so I can be sure that my tables are in
    Josh> sync with the docs.

Of course you can.  But you can do all that with reST, ASCIItext, and
pod, too....  IIRC, ASCIItext comes with a Docbook generator, which
then gets processed to manpages by xmlto.  That's the sane way to do
things, for most people.

Don't get me wrong.  Docbook (and XML in general) is a GoodThang[tm].
But it's one of those things that you should seriously think about
paying somebody (or downloading a program ;-) to create for you,
rather than dealing with it yourself.  Postpone learning about it
until you need to do something you can't beg, buy, or steal.

-- 
School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
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