DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 20 July 2011

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

DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 20 July 2011
=============================================================

The DocBook Technical Committee met on Wednesday, 20 July 2011 at
01:00p EDT for 60 minutes.

Agenda

1. Roll call

Present:
Dick Hamilton, Nancy Harrison, 
Scott Hudson, Jirka Kosek, Larry Rowland
Bob Stayton, Norm Walsh

Regrets:
Paul Grosso, Gershon Joseph

2. Accepted the minutes [1] of the previous meeting.

3. Next meeting: 17 August 2011

OK.

4. Review of the agenda.

No changes.

5. Review of open action items

  a.  Bob to update his XSL stylesheet for building a
      DocBook document from an assembly.
      CONTINUE

  b.  Jirka will write up a comparison of the two transclusion 
      approaches (empty element with @ref attribute or
      dedicated ref element).
      COMPLETED

  c.  Norm to produce a Publisher's schema based on DocBook 5.0 instead of 5.1.
      COMPLETED

  d.  Norm to add links to Publisher's schema on docbook.org.
      COMPLETED
  
  e.  Bob to add contributed Publisher's stylesheets to the XSL distribution.
      CONTINUE

  f.  Norm to fix Publishers doc and publish on docbook.org.
      COMPLETED

  g.  Norm to redo Simplified DocBook with 5.0 as the base.
      COMPLETED

  h.  Norm to post Simplfied DocBook 5.0 to docbook.org.
      CONTINUE

  i.  Norm to post DocBook 5.1 beta with latest assembly stuff to docbook.org.
      COMPLETED

  j.  Nancy to get an explanation of terms in the DITA paper on
      transclusions and conditional text.
      COMPLETED

  k.  Gerson to propose content models for result element(s)
      (RFE 3163121).
      CONTINUE


6.  DocBook assembly.

Bob raised RFE 3368297 to allow hierarchical elements to
be empty except for title.  The expectation is that
such empty elements would be populated during the
assembly process.  Basically the content models would
change from using + to using * for block and sections.
Since this loosens the content models, the change would
be backwards compatible.

Proposal to accept 3368297 was approved.

The TC considers the design of assembly to be complete,
and now we need experience.  Bob will finish up the
assembly stylesheet shortly and make it available.


7.  Transclusion in DocBook.

Jirka summarized his message [2] comparing an element approach
versus an attribute approach to transclusions as described
in his proposal[3].

Regarding the attribute mechanism, Jirka pointed out that
@copy does id fixup, but @ref does not.

Bob raised the distinction between predefined reusable content
declared inside a definitions element versus an inclusion
of an arbitrary external element.

Larry pointed out a need in either mechanism for transcluding
the content only of the referenced element.  That would be how
any reference to a def element would work, since def is not
to appear in the document flow.

Larry expressed a strong preference for a mechanism that
would replace entities, which the definitions element
provides.  But a def could be referenced either by a
ref element or by a @ref attribute, *if* there is an
implied rule that any reference to a def element is
always content only.

Another option is to add a @contentonly attribute,
similar to @copy, except it only transcludes the
content of the referenced element into the current element.

Bob pointed out that the ref element might be more flexible
when referencing a def that had a sequence of siblings.
A ref element is always replaced.  

Norm asked some straw poll questions:

a.  Does anyone want to not pursue transclusions?  No one responded.
b.  Does anyone strongly favor ref element?  Bob responded.
c.  Does anyone favor attribute approach?  Nancy responded.

ACTION: Bob and Nancy to initiate a discussion on the mailing
list to further develop the issues between the two approaches.

8.  Review of Requests for Enhancement

    To browse a specific RFE, enter the URL (on one line):

      http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&;;
      group_id=21935&atid=384107&aid=XXXX

    RFEs to revisit for 6.0
      1907003  biblioid content model too broad  

    RFEs under discussion
      1679665  Add better support for modular documentation  
      2820190  add a topic element  
      2820947  Ability to transclude text 
      3035565  Allow sections at any level  
      3107140  aconym expansion inline 
      3156768  <result> tag

      3368297  allow empty hierarchical elements 

Approved.


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[1] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/201106/msg00018.html
[2] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/201107/msg00003.html
[3] http://docbook.org/docs/transclusion/2011-04-20/

Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
bobs@sagehill.net