Ever wonder why we don't see as much Docbook around as we might? I mean, aside from its XML Hellscape? Whelp. Because a lot of the widgets in this "open standard" are tied to closed license tools.
Take //revisionbar -> //fo:change-bar-begin. Go ahead and try to run that through Saxon. Yeah, that's right, the Official Opentopia DocBook FO gives you an element that can only get processed into PDF via vendor FO processors. And those vendors are NOT cheap.
Crap like this fed the growth of web-based PDF engines like WeasyPrint, Vivliostyle, Paged.js, Prawn, and, on the paid side, Prince. Incidentally, making changebars with Asciidoctor and Paged is a frickin' snap, and you do it from git CLI instead of hand-coding every goddamn change bar.
(But wait! You can hire yet another closed source tool to do a docbook diff that inserts the markup that can only be interpreted by another closed source tool! SIGN ME UP)
We're not even going to touch the many, many, many XML specifications that ride on proprietary blobs in their own PIs - without which the XML is completely unparseable. Or dual mode validation with DTDs riding alongside schemas in delightfully undefined ways. Or . . or . . blabbity blabbity blah. Short version, whatever extra functionality was gained from XML publishing - and I'm not convinced there were any gains at all, even theoretical ones - was largely just not worth these sorts of traps. So today the whole ecosystem is today one that's largely based on government requirements and the starry-eyed consultants who love them. The rest of techcomm picked up lightweight markup or joined the Church of Madcap.
Ever wonder why we don't see as much Docbook around as we might? I mean, aside from its XML Hellscape? Whelp. Because a lot of the widgets in this "open standard" are tied to closed license tools.
Take //revisionbar -> //fo:change-bar-begin. Go ahead and try to run that through Saxon. Yeah, that's right, the Official Opentopia DocBook FO gives you an element that can only get processed into PDF via vendor FO processors. And those vendors are NOT cheap.
Crap like this fed the growth of web-based PDF engines like WeasyPrint, Vivliostyle, Paged.js, Prawn, and, on the paid side, Prince. Incidentally, making changebars with Asciidoctor and Paged is a frickin' snap, and you do it from git CLI instead of hand-coding every goddamn change bar.
(But wait! You can hire yet another closed source tool to do a docbook diff that inserts the markup that can only be interpreted by another closed source tool! SIGN ME UP)
We're not even going to touch the many, many, many XML specifications that ride on proprietary blobs in their own PIs - without which the XML is completely unparseable. Or dual mode validation with DTDs riding alongside schemas in delightfully undefined ways. Or . . or . . blabbity blabbity blah. Short version, whatever extra functionality was gained from XML publishing - and I'm not convinced there were any gains at all, even theoretical ones - was largely just not worth these sorts of traps. So today the whole ecosystem is today one that's largely based on government requirements and the starry-eyed consultants who love them. The rest of techcomm picked up lightweight markup or joined the Church of Madcap.