From: Steven Jenkins <steven.jenkins@...>
Date: 2005-05-11T12:16:21+09:00
Subject: Re: In need of a simple, powerful markup language

Cs. Henk wrote:
> Could you suggest an easy-to-use+write+read markup language which can be
> rendered to html and and pdf easily and nicely?
> 
> * Not latex, because it doesn't clearly separate content and form
> * Not docbook, because hand-writing xml is pain

Have you looked at any XML editors (e.g.,
http://gnomedesktop.org/node/1151)? You don't have to hand-write XML to
use DocBook.

> but something similar in functionality...
> 
> And of course, it would be great if it were ruby-based or at least there
> existed a ruby api / toolset to the language.

I've done some messing around on a DocBook-to-LaTeX translator (in
Ruby). It's not really general--I use role attributes in DocBook
elements as hints to LaTeX--but it produces nice output for the subset
of DocBook I care about (specification documents produced from a system
engineering database). Let me know if you want to see it.

I was mulling over making a Ruby implementation of TeXmerge
(http://gnomedesktop.org/node/1151) but I probably won't ever get around
to it.

Steve