Re: [docbook-apps] Docbook 5.0 and stylesheets

[Karen Schneider <kgschneider@gmail.com>]

I thought I'd try to get an update on the questions responded to in this thread from February (responses included below my sig file) because I've been asked questions about DocBook that I expect I'll hear more of as we continue to discuss the use of DocBook in our project. I also had to convince someone who tried xlstproc for the first time that yes, it does support 5.0.


1. Will there be (are there) 5.0 stylesheets?

2. Is there a projected timetable for DocBook 5 becoming an OASIS standard? (I know 4.5 is an OASIS standard.) 

3. If we're starting from scratch (that is, have no legacy DocBook XML), is it better to use the namespace-aware stylesheets (the -ns versions)? 

4. Any way to invoke a switch in xsltproc that says "relax, don't worry, this is actually working"? ;)

-- 
| Karen G. Schneider
| Community Librarian
| Equinox Software Inc. "The Evergreen Experts"

| Toll-free: 1.877.Open.ILS (1.877.673.6457) x712
| kgs@esilibrary.com
| Web: http://www.esilibrary.com
| Be a part of the Evergreen International Conference, May 20-22, 2009!
| http://www.lyrasis.org/evergreen

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 3:35 AM, Camille Bégnis <camille@neodoc.biz> wrote:

Hello,

indeed the picture is a bit blurry at the moment while docbook is migrating from 4.x to 5.0. Some points to try to answer your questions:

- 4.x docbook will not evolve anymore, the current standard is now 5.0
- 5.0 is not officially an OASIS standard yet, because of administrative reasons only
- many people have been using exclusively 5.0 for more than a year without issues.
- there are not really 5.0 stylesheets at the moment. Some work is being done on XSLT2 stylesheets, but this is not production ready I believe. So 4.x stylesheets have been adapted to be capable of handling 5.0 documents
- 5.0 documents are not exactly processed back to 4.x: it is just that there is a first step that makes some adjustments to the document so it is correctly processed by the stylesheet. However this is transparent to the user. The user just apply the stylesheet once.
- there is the namespace aware stylesheet version (-ns) that is specific to 5.0 but basically based on the standard stylesheet.tax

So in short: just apply current -ns stylesheet with xsltproc on your document.

Concerning xincludes, the syntax is the same as in DB 4.x, just remember to use the namespace.

All this is my vision of the issue, I will let experts precise or correct all  if necessary

Camille.