author

[maxwell <maxwell@umiacs.umd.edu>]

I have a question about the <author> element.  It can occur as a 
daughter of a bunch of elements, but there are two parents where its 
usage seems a bit unclear to me: <info> and <authorgroup>.  The intent 
is clear: <author> should appear under <authorgroup> "when a document 
has multiple authors or collabarators" 
(http://www.docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/authorgroup.html).  So in the 
context of a book or chapter or author, multiple authors should be under 
/book/info/authorgroup/. However, afaik there's nothing in the schema 
preventing one from having both /book/info/authorgroup/author and 
/book/info/author *in the same document*.  (It's not clear to me whether 
one could have multiple <author> daughters of /book/info/, or just one.  
I think there can be multiples.)

What is the intent if there's an <author> under both paths?  Ideally, I 
guess they'd be combined in some smart way; or else there should be a 
warning.  The combination of course has to be handled by the particular 
app you're using to convert the XML into some other form.  But a 
warning--if appropriate--would come from the schemas.  (Probably not 
possible with rng; maybe there could be a schematron rule?)

The same thing happens with <editor> and <othercredit>, both of which 
can appear in the same places as <author>; and the same possibility of 
putting these elements under <someelement>/<authorgroup> or directly 
under <someelement> happens with <biblioentry> and probably several 
other places.

BTW, the question came up because we had <author> in both places, and I 
was trying to debug why someone's name wasn't showing up in the PDF.

   Mike Maxwell
   University of Maryland