Re: DOCBOOK: DocBook-XML and conditional sections

[Norman Walsh <ndw at nwalsh dot com>]

/ Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@debian.org> was heard to say:
| 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.

I'd be surprised if that was true in a really broad sense. There
are definitely places where the documentation has never been
really clear and where the semantics have drifted, but I don't
agree that it's often blurry, in general.

| > 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.

That's what I meant.

| > 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.

Uh, OK. That strikes me as an exceptionally narrow view of "free"
(and isn't Kaffe supposed to support all of the JDK eventually?)
but...whatever.

| Also, our documentation leader prefers DSSSL :-)

Yeah, I'm fond of it myself. Clean, elegant, powerful. But I
think XSL is the future.

                                        Cheers,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | A heavy snowfall disappears into
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | the sea. What silence!
Member, DocBook Editorial Board    |