Re: [docbook-tc] DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 24January 2007

[Steven Cogorno <Steven.Cogorno@Sun.COM>]

On Jan 25, 2007, at 4:20 AM, Grosso, Paul wrote:

Bob: avoid using out info if it breaks your tool. Unlikely that

having info in the schema would break the tool.

"If it hurts, don't do it."  Not something I'd like to explain

to my DocBook users, and not a good way to make a DocBook DTD

decision if you ask me.

If I understand your reasoning, Paul, you're proposing the TC make schema decisions based on what tools can support. That puts us in a very precarious position.  It's impossible to treat every vendor fairly.  Our primary constituency, IMO, are DocBook users -- not vendors.

If we made decisions based on tool support, many of the structures that we already have in DocBook probably would not exist now.  Given the choice between a model that is easy to implement with existing tools and a model that is not easy to implement, clearly the former is the model we should use.  But ease of implementation with a particular tool chain should not be the determinant.

Every DocBook implementation has limitations and varying levels of support.  This line of reasoning could certainly become a slippery slope such that we end up designing to the lowest-common-denominator.  I don't think that serves anyone well.

Steven Cogorno

Sun Microsystems