Couple questions regarding XML as source... is there any of our documentation that is currently written in xml (no the svg ones don't count)?
Yes, doc/keys.xml. It's a custom vocabulary I invented for the key chart. Likely not usable for anything else.
Also, will this be handwritten XML or will the fact that OO uses XML suffice for the time being (given that it's relatively easy to extract and manipulate)?
I haven't looked into it personally (yet - I may have to work with it soon for my job), but from what I've read, OO's XML is presentation-oriented and thus almost useless as a sematic source. It's basically the same as MS Word, except that it's open and XML. So at least, we will need doc writers to use styles consistently, and then maybe write some XSLT to extract only the text and the styles from it, disregarding all the visual stuff.
- Do we want to deal with raster images? (as it would make sense given
the nature of the doc). One significant difference though is that I would of course use the actual potrace output for the results of the traced images (vs just using the images Bob already prepared).
Yes, any system you build should handle both bitmaps and SVG images.
- In Bob's more "complex" examples he used the Botticelli Venus, and
I'm going to change that unless anyone opposes. I think that vector-loving people associate it with Illustrator.
OK with me :)