Introduction
LD First paragraph contents
LD
LD Second paragraph contents
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Example 2, emphasis
DB release
LD release
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Example 3, Itemized lists
DB
DB
DB This is the first item
DB
DB
DB
DB This is the second item
DB
DB
DB
DB This is the third item
DB
DB
LD
LD - This is the first item
LD
- This is the second item
LD
- This is the third item
LD
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Example 4, Author
DB
DB David
DB Lawyer
DB
DB dave@lafn.org
DB
DB
LD David Lawyer
LD
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One may use the linux "grep -c" command to help count the number of
tags in a doc. Converting a linuxdoc document to docbook increased
the number of tags by about a factor of 3. Linuxdoc usually doesn't
require both start and end tags like My report. One
can just use My report. Also, in several cases both start and
end tags may be omitted and authors usually don't even realize that
such tags exist. So the first step in machine conversion of linuxdoc
to other formats is to find and insert the missing tags. Doing only
this step (as a test) resulted in about twice as many tags.
The conclusion is that a document in docbook will require a few times
as many tags and may require several times the effort due to more
tags, longer tags, tagging objects that would not need tagging in
linuxdoc, and a more complex structure of nested tags that the user
needs to deal with. Linudoc has an underlying structure almost as
complex as docbook but it's mostly hidden from the writer of
documentation.
All of this makes Linuxdoc much easier to utilize than Docbook, but
potentially just as powerful if it were developed further.