["Nancy (Paisner) Harrison" <nancyh@rational.com>] comment on minutesof TC meeting, May 22, 2001

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

Hi Nancy,

I agree that topics are more chapter-like (or even section-like) than
book-like. My thinking was that

  <set>
   <book>...</book>
   <book>...</book>
   ...
  </set>

would make sets of books whereas

  <set>
   <topic>...</topic>
   <topic>...</topic>
   <topic>...</topic>
  </set>

would make a set of topics. I may have been foolishly trying to avoid
introducing a new top-level 'helpset' element since it seemed very
much like set.

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• From: "Nancy (Paisner) Harrison" <nancyh@rational.com>
• To: ndw@nwalsh.com
• Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 17:31:40 -0400

Hi Norm,

[by the way, I tried to send this to the docbook-tc list, but it was sent back
as unauthorized. If you think the perspective is useful, can you forward it to
the other docbook-tc members?  thanks.]


Looking at the minutes for the TC meeting of May 22, I noticed that Norm
proposed adding a Topic element as an alternative to a 'book' element.

At Rational, our help system is made up of a set of help files, each of which
has multiple topics.  I'd be more inclined to add Topic to the structure at the
chapter level, with a container element at the book level called, perhaps, a
'helpset' or something like that.  I think the level of organization of a topic
is much closer to a chapter than to a book.

This is an issue that we at Rational are currently dealing with, since we want
to use our customized version of DocBook both for print manuals (of which we
have many) and online help (of which we also have a lot) and we want to be able
to reuse the material across media where appropriate.  So far, for our online
help, we're simply using a book as a container for each help file, and using
chapter for each topic.  But we'd rather, of course, have a DTD that is
actually designed with online help a bit more in mind.

Just my $.02, and thanks for the work you folks are doing maintaining DocBook.


Nancy 

________________________
Nancy (Paisner) Harrison
Rational Software
Lexington  MA
nancyh@rational.com

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