About the future format for LFS (reworded)

[Bruce Dubbs]

William Immendorf wrote:

> This started in a March 2008 post titled "Format for the future of LFS". It
> has been disscused through the years and I decided to start it back up again.

William, I appreciate you starting up the conversation.  Progress has be quite 
slow and we need to put some more effort into LFS to bring it up to date.

I think you proposal and the discussion has reached a point where we are just 
rehashing what has been said.  The question has been asked about the advantages 
of RelaxNG.  The only answers I've heard are basically:

1.  We can add out own tags.
2.  Because it is there.

This is not sufficient.  We haven't been trying to work around a tag problem. 
The editors are quite comfortable with the way the book is generated.  Change 
for the sake of change is not where we want to put in our effort.  If LFS was a 
completely new project, we may well consider what you are proposing.   However, 
LFS has been around for almost nine years.

If you want to show is what can be done, download the source and make whatever 
changes you want and post the results.  It doesn't have to be the whole book.
It can be just Chapter 5.  It could even be the editor's guide with updated 
contents for your proposed methodology.  Until you do something like that, I 
don't think any of the editors will seriously consider your proposal.

One other thing.  I suspect that English is not your first language.  The tone 
of your posts is a bit too strident for the Editor community.  "You must", "my 
plan", and "we need" are too direct.  Try using words like "I propose" or "In my 
opinion" to introduce your ideas.  Remember that you are not a member of the 
established editor group and if you would like to be a member of the community, 
you have to convince others that you can work with them and not just proclaim 
courses of action.

   -- Bruce