Re: DOCBOOK: Re: objection to docbook.dcl

[Adam Di Carlo <adam at onshore dot com>]

Karl Eichwalder <keichwa@gmx.net> writes:

> Adam Di Carlo <adam@onshore.com> writes:
> 
> > Yes -- I'm not against a declaratation.  I'm just against a
> > declaration which is unnecessarily restrictive, with the consequence
> > that a non-trival number (perhaps 30%?  more?) of the docbook SGML
> > documents out there will fail to conform to it.
> 
> It's time to fix these documents (at least for distribution and exchange
> purposes).  The SGML declaration is part of the document and the SGML
> system has to make sure the right declaration will be used for
> validation.

Who are you to say that SGML documents that exploit OMITTAG, or use
SUBDOC, for instance, are invalid?  Even Norm, the chair of the OASIS
committeed, doesn't go that far.  He pointed out the declaration
wasn't normative but just for exchange with some legacy tools.

> > I don't know -- maybe there's a good reason why for interchange
> > OMITTAG must be off.  Do some tools out there not understand that?
> 
> Don't know.  Judging from my experiences with HTML applications the
> value of OMITTAG is important but unfortunately not respected...

What HTML applications?  And why would that matter?  We're talking
about SGML parsers here.

> First: I fully appreciate and support your hard work on openjade --
> thanks a lot!  Unfortunately, I'm not able to contribute to this project
> (I'm not a (C++) hacker).  Nevertheless we should try to get the facts
> right.

Indeed.  My "facts" about the concrete syntax were wrong -- you're
"facts" about the normative status of the declaration seem to be
wrong.

As a packager, you should probably fix this for your users.  Norm
himself said this DECL shouldn't be on by default.

> > Well, OpenJade *does* support DTDDECL, and that's what led me to
> > examine this issue.
> 
> The devel version does support DTDDECL.

I don't want to get into a spitting war, but *yes*, it does.  It was
added in OpenSP 1.4.  The newest is 1.5pre5.

> > (Whether OpenJade is widespread is another issue, but it is better
> > than Jade IMHO).
> 
> I do ship openjade 1.3 for SuSE Linux since quite some time; at the
> moment, 1.5 is not an option since it's a) flagged as a "devel" or
> "pre-release" _and_ you told us about known issues: it's slower the jade
> (that the most important point at the moment).

I think you're confused.  The newest openjade from CVS is 1.4devel.

I think you are probably correct as a packager to ship OpenJade 1.3,
yet.  But that's irrelevant -- this is an OpenSP issue, not an
OpenJade issue at all.

> Should be done for version 5; someone will have to write an (inofficial)
> DTD for version 5, BTW ;)

I was told that OASIS isn't going to drop the SGML DTD completely for
DocBook 5 -- was that incorrect?

> [Question: what's up with the docbook-tc address?  Is this a public
> mailinglist?]

It's not public, and it's on the mailing list.  I trimmed it because
it just bounces for me.

-- 
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onshore.com.....<URL:http://www.onshored.com/>


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