Re: [docbook] DocBook for encoding a family history "encyclopedia"

[Brad Tombaugh <Brad@Tombaugh.org>]

Mike, I am also using DocBook for a family history/genealogy  book. I'm using Book as the document type, with Chapters for each branch of family. I've created index entries for both people and places, using surname as the primary, and first and middle name as the secondary. I include years lived when needed in cases where the name is not unique. For women, I also include an entry under maiden name, if known. I've done much the same for places, using the country or state as the primary indexterm, followed by county and city or township as appropriate.

You can create footnotes for reference information, as described here: http://www.docbook.org/tdg51/en/html/footnote.html (depending on which version of DocBook you are using). They can be presented as footnotes or endnotes according to the stylesheet settings you are using.

You can create a bibliography as well, as described here: http://www.docbook.org/tdg51/en/html/bibliography.html

I have used formalpara in some places using a person's name as the paragraph title for emphasis, and often use simplelist entires when listing facts or children. My book is more genealogy than family history, so many chapters use nested section elements to indent each generation.

I have taken a look at using TEI, as it is more general purpose than DocBook, but I'll admit to being rather overwhelmed by its complexity. I tried converting some of my text into TEI, but struggled with just getting the basic document structure down, so that I could produce any output. In the end, I decided to stick with DocBook.

--------
Brad Tombaugh
mailto:Brad@Tombaugh.org
http://www.Tombaugh.org

On Mar 16, 2013, at 10:13 AM, Michael Broschinsky <mikebroschinsky@mail.com> wrote:

> I have used DocBook for a little while now. I have created a style manual for our organization as well as a users' guide for a web application.
> 
> In my not professional life, I am a family historian. I would like to put together an encylopedia-like book that would contain person name and place name entries pertinent to our family.
> 
> I would like to have endnotes at the end of each entry as well as (maybe?) a biliography. I'm not sure of how best to encode this in DocBook however.
> 
> My inclination is a top-level book containing articles for each entry. If the work becomes extensive enough, I would separate article groups by part.
> 
> How to get endnotes and a bibliography to appear at the end of each article would be a question for docbook-apps I suppose.
> 
> Am I going down a useful path here? Does this seem a reasonable approach?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Mike
> 
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