Re: [docbook-apps] Questions about DocBook 5.x

[Jirka Kosek <jirka@kosek.cz>]

Ellyn Larson wrote:

> Questions:
> --------------
> 1) In a general view, would you recommend jumping into 5.x now? I
> realise that the DTD/Schema versions are "not normative". How "not
> normative" are they -- scale of 1 (being MSXML) to 5 (being a strong
> parser)?

"Non normative" means that they are still under the development. But if 
you look into changes made in V5 schema during the last year, you will 
find that these are minor changes usually in a not very commonly used 
markup.

I don't think that any element/attribute will be removed or renamed in 
V5 schema before it will get "official" status.

For the last 9 months I use DocBook V5 when building new documentation 
solution for my customers, because risk of changes in schema is very low 
and benefits of faster (and thus cheaper) development of schema 
customizations are clearly bigger.

> 2) Is it reasonable to think we can integrate W3C MathML 2.0 DTD with
> DocBook 5.x?  I have some problems with "XLINK.prefix" and would rather
> know if it is "doable" before I dive in. BTW, it would not be a bad idea
> to include in the documentation "Extending the DocBook DTD with the
> MathML DTD".

It should be doable, but I don't think it is worth doing. It should be 
easier to create such customization in RELAX NG (it is here already) and 
then use build tools in DocBook repository to convert this RELAX NG 
schema into DTD. (Please note that you can't use Trang for this, because 
Trang produces incorrect DTD from DocBook V5 RELAX NG schema.)

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