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Subject: Re: DOCBOOK: Re: details of DocBook versioning policy
/ "Matt G." <matt_g_@hotmail.com> was heard to say: | BTW, does the TC use any sort of regression suite (e.g. documents that | use each aspect of the content model from a given DTD version that are | validated against each new DTD from the same major rev)? It doesn't | seem like it'd be much work to maintain, once setup. The TC has no official regression suite. I have a bunch of test docs that I try and we post betas well in advance of the actual release in the hope that everyone will try the new version with their favorite content. | >I've tried to make the stylesheets support all versions of the DTD. | >Most of our backwards incompatible changes have, in fact, been | >fairly minor. | | How big of a limitation has this been? How much additional work has | it required? Not much. We've very rarely changed existing semantics, the only backwards incompatible changes that I can think of involved no longer supporting a given element or a given element in a particular context. But the template or contruction rules for the element still exist, so it just works out. | I'd like to think that the best approach for writing stylesheets is to | maintain them as specific to the DTD's major rev. Perhaps all the | commonality between the various major revs can be factored out into a | common module that they all share, though it's debatable which | approach results in a higher maintenance burden. This is certainly | the approach I'll consider, in devising my customization layer. That turns out to be a pain. Consider the introduction of db31.dsl which was mostly along exactly those lines. Now I often get irritated by the fact that some functionality is in dbXXX.dsl but some is also in db31.dsl. For DocBook, I think it's simpler to treat the stylesheets as stylesheets over the union of DTD versions. | BTW, I noticed that the Apache XML group used a non-DocBook | documentation format, for their fairly substantial, XML-based | documentation on Xerces (their C++/Java validating DOM/SAX XML | parser). Does anyone know why (I asked them, but have yet to receive | a reply)? I couldn't even find a mention of docbook, in the mailing | list archives (other than regarding issues their libraries had w/ it). It's been discussed more than once, so it should be in the archives. I don't represent Apache, but my recollection from watching the discussions go by is that it is mostly a matter of inertia. They did their DTD (stylebook?) before they noticed that DocBook existed and now they've got tools and legacy. | _________________________________________________________________ | Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp No, thank you :-) Be seeing you, norm -- Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | One should never make one's debut http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | with a scandal. One should reserve Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | that to give interest to one's old | age.--Oscar Wilde
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