assembly info proposal

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

I'm following up on my action item to develop markup for metadata in assemblies.  As 
background, here are the minutes from the previous meeting:

--------------------------------------------------------------
Some wanted to use info for metadata about the assembly
elements themselves, following the pattern of other docbook
elements where an info element documents its parent.

Bob mentioned that using info in module where content is
being specified was confusing, since that location
implies using info as an override.

Larry pointed out that the element name
"override" in module was not always appropriate.
In the case of a module that specifies renderas="chapter"
and has no resourceref attribute, then a title specified in
that module would not be overriding anything.
Perhaps "contentinfo" would be more general.
---------------------------------------------------------------

I believe that the <info> element name cannot be disambiguated in this situation.  No 
matter how we document it, some people will interpret it as the opposite of what we 
intend.  I would suggest we avoid using it in this context.

So I would suggest the following:

1.  For metadata about the assembly elements themselves, give them explicit element 
names similar to those used in DocBook 4:

assemblyinfo
structureinfo
moduleinfo
resourcesinfo
descriptioninfo
resourceinfo
relationshipsinfo
transformsinfo
transforminfo
relationshipinfo
instanceinfo
associationinfo
outputinfo
filterininfo
filteroutinfo

If the committee feels that is too many new elements, we could use assemblyinfo for 
all of them.

2.  For content intended to be included in the output, I would suggest <merge> instead 
of <override>.  Whatever content is in merge is intended to be merged with the 
resources to generate the output.  Exactly how it is merged is up the local 
application.

Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
bobs@sagehill.net