DOCBOOK: RE: entitiy sharing

[Laurie Mann <laurie dot mann at ansys dot com>]

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	>From:	Dombrowski, James [SMTP:James.Dombrowski@compuware.com]
	>We are using Adept 8.2 on Windows NT with a customized version of
the
	>DocBook DTD. We are writing documentation for a group of small
software
	>applications that all work together, and thus they share quite a
few menu
	>items, fields and functions. Occasionally, some of these items
appear on
	>more than one screen in an application, and must be documented or
described
	>more than once in a particular document.

	>Here's the problem: If we use file entities, we can share them
easily among
	>documents, but we can only use a file entity once in a document, or
we get
	>errors due to multiple use of the ID/IDREF attributes. If we use
text
	>entities (which provide for multiple use within a document), the
only way we
	>know of to share them among documents is to manually copy the
entity
	>declarations to the prologues of the other files (thus defeating
our goal of
	>single-sourcing everything).

	>Are we missing something? Is there a process that will allow us to
share
	>this data among documents, as well as use it more than once in a
document if
	>needed?

	I've done that to a small degree in our documents (we use Epic).

	What you have to do is create short files that do not have any IDs
set in
	them.  For example, I use the same table in a number of documents.
	I don't set the ID in the table.  And, instead of trying to insert
whole sections,
	I'll cluster a few related paragraphs in a single file entity, then
use that
	entity in a section with a unique section ID.

	I'd love to hear more and better ways to entity share because we
definitely
	plan to do more of it in the future.