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Subject: Re: DOCBOOK: A straw proposal for help topics in DocBook


Gershon L Joseph <gershon@mainsoft.com> writes:

> On Thu, 18 Oct 2001, Michael Smith wrote:
> 
> [...]
> > Also, does it make sense to model a help topic as a recursive element?
> > What I mean is, in most (or maybe all) current online help systems,
> > each help "topic" is actually a single HTML page/webpage (though that
> > HTML page might of course be multiple physical pages if you were to
> > print it out).
> >
> > So to model it accurately, it seems like the help-topic element
> > actually shouldn't be recursive. I think it'd be like making Chapter
> > or Article recursive -- just as real chapters can't contain other
> > chapters, real help pages can't contain other help pages.
>
> I don't think this is so for large help projects. Many winhelp and
> HtmlHelp projects come to mind, e.g. MSDN or WordPerfect 9's online
> help. There seems to be no limit to how far down the topic tree you
> can go. [...]

Of course you're right. The containment is expressed in the TOC tree,
so it doesn't really matter that the pages are separate files.

So I can see that yes it's correct to model it as a recursive element.
I actually had it that way --

  <!ELEMENT topic "(title;, topicinfo?, (text, topic?)+)">

-- in the simple standalone help module I put together:

  http://www.logopoeia.com/xml/helpset/helpset.mod







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