Re: [docbook-tc] Proposal: stop shipping entity sets with DocBook V4.4

["Bob Stayton" <bobs@sagehill.net>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Smith" <smith@xml-doc.org>
To: <docbook-tc@lists.oasis-open.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 24, 2004 3:30 AM
Subject: Re: [docbook-tc] Proposal: stop shipping entity sets with DocBook
V4.4


> Bob Stayton <bobs@sagehill.net> writes:
>
> > I think removing the entities entirely from the distribution and then
> > forcing people to hunt them down and integrate them is a step backwards
for
> > DocBook.
>
> [...]
>
> I understand what you're saying, but I personally believe it's a
> positive step forward if you think about about where DocBook is headed.
>
> What I mean is, the ISO entities were never an essential part of DocBook
> to begin with. They were included in the distro and in the DTD as a
> convenience for users. At the time when we didn't have editing
> applications that supported Unicode, it made some sense to include them.
> But I think it makes a lot less sense to do so now.
>
> Along with that, there's the fact that the TC has agreed (I think) to
> eventually move to RELAX NG as the normative schema language for
> DocBook. One of the first things that users are going to find if/when
> they move to doing their authoring and validation using tools that
> support RELAX NG is that they probably don't want to continue using
> named character entities. Doing so will require including an internal
> DTD subset in each and every one of their doc instances, which sort of
> defeats the purpose of using RELAX NG to begin with.

OK, but I think we should take this step when it is appropriate.  That is,
when RelaxNG becomes the normative DocBook schema and more tools support it.
I think this means version 5.  If we do it in version 4.4 of the DTD, we
break backwards compatibility because existing DocBook documents are full of
those entities.  I believe we have (intentionally or not) represented those
entities as part of the XML DTD up to this point, and suddenly removing them
and telling people to go find them somewhere else is not a good transition
plan.

Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
DocBook Consulting
bobs@sagehill.net