Structural Problems with Bookmap

[Eliot Kimber <ekimber@reallysi.com>]

I was asked for specifics in where Bookmap falls short. I've started this
thread to capture those.

In addition to the general critique of Bookmap being a monolithic map type
rather than a combination of a map metadata and topicref domain, I have
identified the following specific design issues:

1. No explicit markup for publication subtitle

2. Limited and underspecified publication metadata:
  - No provision for non-copyright licensing (e.g., Create Commons, other
open-source licenses)
  - No provision for both ISBN-10 and ISBN-13. No provision for ISSNs.
  - 

3. Top-level content model of "chapter*, part*" provides no provision for
using other topicref types as navigation tree roots, which means if you
specialize from Bookmap your only choice is to specialize from <chapter> or
<part>. For example, I have Publisher clients that organize books into
"sections", where sections contain parts or chapters. No way to represent
that in Bookmap, either through a domain or specialization.

4. No provision for chapters between or after parts.

5. No common wrapper (or provision for a common wrapper) around body
topicrefs. Much XML processing is much easier if there is a wrapper around
each major part of the publication (in particular, determining whether a
given topicref is or is not part of the publication, which in the current
design can only be determined negatively.

6. No way to have Bookmap submaps where the root navigation topicref is
e.g., <part> or <chapter> or a common container holding all the body
topicrefs (see (5)).

7. No <glossary> topicref (only glossarlylist>), so no way to easily
distinguish a literal glossary from any other part of the document.

8. <appendices> only allows <appendix>, so no option for other topicref
types. (By contrast, <part> allows base topicref types in addition to
<chapter>.)

9. No provision for explicit covers.

More as I identify or remember them.

Cheers,

E. 
-- 
Eliot Kimber
Senior Solutions Architect
"Bringing Strategy, Content, and Technology Together"
Main: 512.554.9368
www.reallysi.com
www.rsuitecms.com