Re: [docbook-tc] DocBook for Commercial Publishing (expanding ourworld view)

[Jirka Kosek <jirka@kosek.cz>]

Scott Hudson wrote:

> 1. Add a new <periodical> element to support regularly published 
> material, such as a Magazine or Journal issue, blog, newsletters, and 
> even topic, if that should also be added to DocBook. The <periodical> 
> element will be a sibling of <book> and <article>. A whole new blog tool 
> and infrastructure could be supported with the use of <periodical> and 
> <topic>, assuming that <topic> were allowed to contain <section>. Of 
> course, the same could be done with <article> as a child of <periodical>.
> 
> I think periodical was submitted and rejected back in March 
> (https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=384107&aid=1440204&group_id=21935), 
> but it is rather clunky to think of a magazine or newsletter or journal, 
> etc. as a "book" for containment.

Is that element name mismatch really so important? If I understand it 
correctly the current book element offers all you need for periodical 
except the right element name. I think book was considered not only for 
books, but also as a general container for articles. Many tools allow 
you to present name aliases for XML element names, so in your situation 
it might be sufficient to pretend different name to users to make them 
more comfortable.

> 2. Extend <set> to include <periodical> in order to publish or contain a 
> series of this type of content.

See my answer above.

> 3. Add <cover> element to <book> and <periodical> as an optional 
> element. There are a lot of variations in the type of content that could 
> be included in a cover, including title, cover image, jacket text 
> (perhaps sidebar could be used for this), etc. Instead of putting all 
> this in the info element, this separate element would provide a clear 
> distinction of what content should be included in the cover for the 
> particular publication.

We have cover already:

http://www.docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/cover.html

We have so many elements that it is really hard to know them all. ;-) So 
probably we should not introduce new elements without a really good reason.

> Software and hardware documentation blocks and inlines should be a 
> separate module available in DocBook 5, as well as other domain-specific 
> modules. Perhaps periodical-specific blocks and inlines could be 
> separate modules as well!

In general the idea of having separate modules looks great. But I think 
that it will bring many problems related to maintenance and deployment. 
This could result in more confused users. There are also subtle 
technical details that have to be solved -- should be extension modules 
in a separate namespace, or should they inherit DocBook namespace?

We can consider this more modular approach, but not before 5.0 is out. I 
  think that we should release 5.0 first, with support for foreign 
elements in info and without topic stuff. Many users are waiting for 
final and stable V5.0 release. I think that we should feature freeze 
V5.0 and release RC1 during the next meeting.

Another RFEs like modules, periodical, topic could be addressed in V5.1 
or V6.

>  From the recent traffic on the list, there appears to be a fair amount 
> of backlash against adding topic, and a call to "stick with what DocBook 
> is best at". I think focusing on the needs of commercial publishing will 
> continue to grow the DocBook user base and opportunities for DocBook to 
> be implemented.

I think that DocBook has already pretty good support for commercial 
publishing in V5.0 (there is no cover in V4.5 IIRC). We should do final 
release of V5.0 as soon as possible so users can fully benefit from new 
features of V5.0.

			Jirka

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