Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Processing Instructions and structure

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

At 14:31 2002 03 25 -0800, Bob Stayton wrote:
>I'm branching the subject here, hence the new Subject line.
>
>On Mon, Mar 25, 2002 at 04:34:52PM -0500, Norman Walsh wrote:
>> 1. Directory levels are cumulative. Given:
>> 
>>    <book>
>>    <?book filename="b.html"?>
>>    <chapter>
>>      <?dbhtml dir="chap1" filename="c.html"?>
>>      <section>
>>        <?dbhtml dir="sect1" filename="s.html"?>
>>      ...
>> 
>>    b.html will go in the current directory
>>    c.html will go in chap1/
>>    s.html will go in chap1/sect1/
>> 
>> 2. You must not use absolute path names.
>> 3. You must not use "../" in any path name.
> 
>
>This scheme looks fine, but for me it
>raises a long-standing question I have about
>whether or how processing instructions fit into a
>document's structure.  The XML Recommendation
>doesn't say anything out it. 

There's nothing to say.  PIs are nodes in the tree
with no (non-character) substructure.  There is nothing
to be said about how PIs work; by their very definition,
how processing instructions are interpreted is defined 
by the processor planning to process them (or the person
defining them in the first place).

> If you look at your example:
>
>    <chapter>
>      <?dbhtml dir="chap1" filename="c.html"?>
>      <section>
>        <?dbhtml dir="sect1" filename="s.html"?>
>
>You have associated the PI dir="chap1" with <chapter> by
>putting it inside the chapter element.
>So the rule is that a PI applies to the element that
>contains it, I guess.  

The rule is whatever Norm says it is, since he (and, implicitly,
the stylesheets he has written that deal with these PIs) is defining
the processing expectation for these processing instructions.

So he'll have to answer some of your detailed questions (or you
could read the stylesheets and perhaps find out that way).

>Are the rules of PIs always set by the application
>(in this case, how the stylesheet interprets them)?

Yes.

paul