Re: [docbook] Advice needed on annotating page breaks...

["Bob Stayton" <bobs@sagehill.net>]

Since you are using DocBook 5, I'll mention one other possibility that 
avoids the use of processing instructions.  The list of common attributes 
now includes an "annotations" attribute, which permits you to associate 
<annotation> elements with the current element.  Something like this:

... end of one chapter.</para>
</chapter>
<chapter xml:id="thischap" annotations="pagebreak">
<title>...

and then put an annotation element in a place where it is permitted:

<info>
<annotation xml:id="pagebreak">
<para>page break in original document appeared before this element.
</para>
</annotation>
</info>

In this scheme, the location of the annotation element is not the location 
of the page break. Rather, the page break is located at the point just 
before the start tag of the element whose annotations attribute refers to 
this annotation element's xml:id.  This kind of indirect reference makes 
annotations very flexible, because the annotations attribute *is* 
universal.

You could reuse this annotation element for many page breaks if you don't 
need to record page numbers, otherwise you would need to create an 
annotation element (and xml:id) for each numbered page break and point to 
those individually.

The full range of possibilities of annotations is not yet documented in The 
Definitive Guide V5.  You can find more information about it from this 
mailing list message and the followups:

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200504/msg00012.html


Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
DocBook Consulting
bobs@sagehill.net


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stuart Hungerford" <stuart.hungerford@anu.edu.au>
To: <docbook@lists.oasis-open.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 12:00 AM
Subject: [docbook] Advice needed on annotating page breaks...


> Hi,
>
> I need a little bit of advice from the DocBook community
> on the best way to handle this situation:
>
> We're creating DocBook documents that are re-typed
> versions of various old paper published documents. DocBook
> is a good match for the chapters, sections, tables and
> paragraphs etc that make up these source documents.
>
> It's very important to us to record where page breaks
> occur in the source documents and we're currently using
> <annotation> elements for this.
>
> The problem is that the DocBook 5 schema doesn't allow
> <annotation> elements to appear in all the places we
> need (e.g. between sections of a chapter, or before a
> chapter title).
>
> I can see several ways to handle this, but I'm not sure
> which way (if any) is best practice:
>
> - modify the schema to allow <annotation> elements
>   anywhere
>
> - find a better element for these page breaks than
>   <annotation>
>
> - use an XML processing instruction instead
>
> Any advice much appreciated,
>
> Stu
>
> -- 
>
> Stuart Hungerford
> ANUSF Data Intensive Projects
>
>
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