Re: DOCBOOK: DocBook-XML and conditional sections

[Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer at debian dot org>]

On Tuesday 28 September 1999, at 9 h 43, the keyboard of Norman Walsh 
<ndw@nwalsh.com> wrote:

> Oh, the semantics of effectivity attributes are all a bit loose. 

That's what I suspected :-) It seems common for many DocBook elements as well: 
DocBook is very rich in elements but the difference between two elements is 
often quite blurred. Reading DocBook sources from different people clearly 
show discrepancies in the way they interpreted the semantics.

> If you're
> documenting different versions of Linux or something similar, I think
> OS makes sense.

At the present time, two different releases of the Debian operating system. 
So, your solution seems right. But the problem of adding a custom attribute 
will not stay purely theoretical for ever.

> 1. Since you're using XML, you've got lots of parser choices.
>    Implement a two-pass solution, using Java or Perl or something else
>    to produce the appropriately profiled document then publish that.

OK, you mean:

my-custom-script.pl -V version2.1 myfile.xml > myfile-2.1.xml
jade [jade options] myfile-2.1.xml
my-custom-script.pl -V version2.2 myfile.xml > myfile-2.2.xml
jade [jade options] myfile-2.2.xml

?

It seems simple. That's probably what I'll do.

> 2. Run your documents through the XSL stylesheets and tell Norm all
>    the things that don't work right, the things that prevent you from
>    switching to the XSL versions of the stylesheets. 

XSL processors are not common. Since it is for Debian documentation (and also by personal opinion), I need a free one. ("Free as in free speech, not as in free beer".) James Clark's xt/xp, for instance, only works with the JDK, not with kaffe and thus is not really free.

Also, our documentation leader prefers DSSSL :-)