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Subject: RE: [docbook] Add topic element to DocBook?
Please forgive me for launching these thoughts into the middle of the discussion without a thorough consideration of the whole thread. I only just joined the docbook@ list, having been confused about it vs. docbook-tc@ (where I'm an observer) for quite a long time now. On discovering my error, Norm suggested that I send some thoughts I had intended for the TC list but couldn't send there because of my status. I was originally attempting to respond to the TC list thread about a "task" as a sibling to a "section", which relates to the question of considering a DITA-like "topic" structure. Here's what I had hoped to send: ==== IMHO, a task should only be allowed as a peer to a section if there's a document-construction methodology that makes sense of this, such that the model actually reflects a targeted application. I wrote a bit about this topic here a while back: http://www.xmlgrrl.com/blog/archives/2005/11/02/topic-oriented-architecture/ If you were doing an Information Mapping-like model, where they have a clear notion of seven different categories of "block" that can be peers and two of them are "task" and "generic info" (actually real IM would have "procedure" and a bunch of other specialized ones, like "concept"), then okay. Without that discipline, you'd better be very sure about agreed processing expectations before allowing it, because it's not in the common experience of most writers to do this, or in the experience of most readers to see it. It's not impossible to come up with such rules, but it seems to me they would be "made up" rather than codifying existing norms. ==== I hope not to be such a stranger, now that I'm on the list with all the cool action. :-) Eve -- Eve Maler +1 425 947 4522 Technology Director eve.maler @ sun.com CTO Business Alliances group Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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