Re: [docbook-apps] Strategies for Migrating DocBook Customization in a Mixed DB4/5 Environment?

[Bob Stayton <bobs@sagehill.net>]

Just to clarify: The namespaced stylesheets and the original 
non-namespaced stylesheets are nearly identical, because one is 
generated from the other. The principal difference is that the element 
names in the namespaced stylesheets have the DocBook namespace prefix.

Both sets of stylesheets have templates matching on all element names 
from both DocBook 4 and 5, so each will work with either DocBook 
version, if the document namespace is adjusted in preprocessing.  This 
works because XSL is template driven, and having templates that are not 
called is perfectly common.   It also works because the content models 
between DocBook 4 and 5 are sufficiently compatible.

So adapting an existing customization layer is mostly done by adding the 
namespace prefix to element names and importing the ns stylesheet. This 
is described in:

http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/CustomDb5Xsl.html

Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
bobs@sagehill.net

On 2/17/2015 3:33 AM, Jirka Kosek wrote:
> On 17.2.2015 10:27, Thomas Schraitle wrote:
> > (Of course, I could feed my new DocBook 5 sources into my existing XSL
> > customizations. This "works", but it takes too much time because of the
> > internal convertion of DocBook 5 to DocBook 4.)
>
> And what about converting V4 documents to V5 (for example with different
> filename) prior running DocBook XSL stylesheets? You automate this using
> make or ant, only changed files will be converted again and you will
> gain significant speed up.
>
> > However, we have some some hefty DocBook XSL customizations; a
> > "DocBook XSL Transition Guide" would be helpful. :)
> >
> > How would you deal with such migration of "old" DocBook 4 XSL
> > customization layers?
>
> Adding namespace prefix in front of element names inside XPath
> expressions should be enough.
>
> 					Jirka