This document records why the documentation is the way it is.

Read the Isok documentation for help on working with DocBook.  This
also contains links and information on the project's history.

This document is derived from work done in DocBook4 and ported to
namespace-enabled DocBook5 for the Gombe Mother-Infant database
project.  This was later ported back to DocBook4 for integration into
the Babase system, developed for the Amboseli Baboon Project.

There remain various bits of commented-out DocBook5 elements, just in
case.

The Gombe Mother-Infant Database was itself developed using the Babase
code base as a starting point.  And Babase chose to use DocBook
because PostgreSQL used DocBook, and at the time there was not much
else available.

So that answers the question: Why DocBook?

It's DocBook4, because that involved the least amount of work.

Likewise, all the complication with multiple source files, XInclude
and olinks and olink databases and whatnot, are still there because
removing it is work.  And who knows, it might be useful.

Karl O. Pinc <kop@karlpinc.com>



