DOCBOOK: Abbreviations and Ordinals

[Marco Kuhlmann <marco.kuhlmann@gmx.net>]

    Hullo.

During the conversion of my TeX sources to DocBook/XML, two
questions arose that you might have an answer for. (I am not
really sure if they belong to this list or rather to
docbook-apps; please correct me if I am wrong.)

1. When I am using abbreviations (and acronyms) in TeX, I
   define macros for them to guarantee a consistent typography.
   (For example, I have macros \EG, \IE etc.) In DocBook, while
   one could use <abbrev>, would it be possible and "good" or
   at least "acceptable" style to transfer this practice and
   have a separate entity for each abbreviation?

2. In German typography, ordinal numbers are indicated by a
   period after the corresponding cardinal number. Normally,
   you would want to have a smaller space after this period
   than after a period terminating a sentence. In TeX, you can
   achieve this by appending a backslash to the ordinal period.
   How would one cater for this using DocBook?

I would appreciate any comments on this.

    Cheers,
    Marco
    
-- 
Marco Kuhlmann                             marco.kuhlmann@gmx.net