Re: [docbook] theorems and similar things

[Wolfgang Jeltsch <wolfgang@jeltsch.net>]

Am Mittwoch, 15. September 2004 20:35 schrieb Shaun McCance:
> [...]

> No, this isn't the right way to do it.

I agree.

> In mathematical texts, theorems and the like are interleaved with
> paragraphs.  Structurally, they're very similar to DocBook's formalpara.
>
> Wolfgang, ideally, you'd want to extend DocBook for this purpose.

Yes, I already feared that an extension would be the only sensible way to do 
theorems etc.

> I've actually considered writing such an extension (MathBook?) before, but
> I've never gotten around to it.  Then extension itself wouldn't be very
> difficult.  Just define some new elements (theorem, lemma, corollary,
> proposition, axiom, definition, proof), give them basically the same
> content model as formalpara (except you probably want to make titles
> optional), and add them to %local.para.class;.

Thanks for these hints.

> You would also have to extend whatever processing system you're using to
> handle these extensions.

I think, that's the problem.  I've read that extending DocBook is rather easy 
because of the way the DocBook DTD is implemented.  But how about DocBook 
stylesheets?  Are they implemented in a similar extension-friendly way?  Is 
it necessary to directly modify the stylesheet code?  I'd like to avoid this 
because otherwise I would have to merge all modifications to the stylesheets 
into my extended stylesheets.

Is an extension with theorems etc. considered for future versions of DocBook?  
If currently not, it maybe should.

> Shaun

In case you work again on MathBook, could you please tell me?  Or could you 
assist me in case I try to implement MathBook and stylesheets for it in the 
future?

Wolfgang