Comment Re:And on the 8th day... (Score 1) 325
At 200-500 pages docbook would work well for a single purpose document that doesn't need a lot of maintenance over time and is for a single purpose (e.g. never going to use sections for a overview or presentation). I still maintain however that the flexibility of DITA is better for any writing that my have more than one use. DITA however is far from perfect as a spec and I could list a number of things that could have been done better (same as with docbook). DITA also gives the ability to extend it's spec (schema's/dtd's) for your own use in a concise manner that can help with the type of task you mention. I'm not on the DITA project so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
The software my company develops can handle most specs so we've dealt with both and I just know that one monolithic schema/DTD presents its own unique problems over a distributed one. The same type of problems exist with monolithic vs. distributed documents (e.g. a single chapter document vs. a chapter as a collection of concepts). It's up for the project to decide which gives more benefit; However for a team larger than a handful, or when maintainability is important I think distributed gives the greater benefit.
Ok enough of that from me.
The software my company develops can handle most specs so we've dealt with both and I just know that one monolithic schema/DTD presents its own unique problems over a distributed one. The same type of problems exist with monolithic vs. distributed documents (e.g. a single chapter document vs. a chapter as a collection of concepts). It's up for the project to decide which gives more benefit; However for a team larger than a handful, or when maintainability is important I think distributed gives the greater benefit.
Ok enough of that from me.