Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2016 14:34:25 +0000
From: One Thousand Gnomes <gnomes@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@intel.com>, LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, Keith Packard <keithp@keithp.com>,
        Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch>,
        Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@osg.samsung.com>,
        Hans Verkuil <hverkuil@xs4all.nl>, linux-media@vger.kernel.org,
        Graham Whaley <graham.whaley@linux.intel.com>
Subject: Re: Kernel docs: muddying the waters a bit
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> DocBook is a means to an end; nobody really wants DocBook itself as far
> as I can tell. 

We only have docbook because it was the tool of choice rather a lot of
years ago to then get useful output formats. It was just inherited when
borrowed the original scripts from Gnome/Gtk. It's still the most
effective way IMHO of building big structured documents out of the kernel.

The Gtk people long ago rewrote the original document script into a real
tool so they have some different and maintained tools that are close to
equivalent and already have some markdown support. Before we go off and
re-invent the wheel it might be worth just borrowing their wheel and
tweaking it as needed ? In particular they can generate help indexes so
that the entire output becomes nicely browsable with an HTML based help
browser.

Alan