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Subject: Questions about RFE 3368279
Hi folks, In RFE #3368279 https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3368297&group_id=21935&atid=384107 Bob says: When modularizing documentation, it is sometimes necessary to create empty modular elements whose content will be supplied during the assembly process. For example, a chapter might not need any introductory paragraphs and so just begin with the first section. If the chapter and sections are all in modular files that are put together with the new assembly element, then the chapter should contain only a title (and other info elements). However, such a nearly empty chapter does not currently validate, because a chapter must have either block content or sections (or both). To better support modularity, a chapter should be permitted to be empty of content. The same is true of appendix, preface, section, and topic. I propose that the content models be modified in 5.1 to allow for nearly empty elements. And we agreed to these changes. But now as I sit down to actually make them, I realize that I have questions and concerns: 1. The RFE asks us to allow a chapter to be empty, but also says the chapter might just contain title or an info. Is the request to allow this: <chapter/> Or this: <chapter><title>Hello Dennis</title></chapter> Or both? 2. The RFE calls out chapter, appendix, preface, section, and topic. I assume section convers all the sectioning elements. Is this really enough elements? What about part, partintro, refentry, refsection, etc.? What about simplesect, sidebar, blockquote, and procedure? How are we selecting the elements? 3. Ugh. There's something about this change that really makes me feel uncomfortable. "Required bag of stuff" OR "empty" just feels wrong. And that's before I even start to think about what that means for the DTD/XSD content models. This is something that only occurs in assemblies, right? So, in fact, do we even want plain, old ordinary DocBook documents to include empty chapters? Is this supposed to be valid? <book xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"> <title>My Title</title> <chapter/> </book> Maybe we should just publish an assembly customization layer that allows this: include "assembly.rnc" { db.chapter |= db.empty.chapter } db.empty.chapter = element db.chapter { db.chapter.attlist, db.chapter.info?, db.chapter.contentmodel? } Comments? Be seeing you, norm -- Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | Fast. Cheap. Well. Pick two. http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | Chair, DocBook Technical Committee |
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