DOCBOOK: Online help elements for DocBook

[Dick Hamilton <hamilton@filesys1.fc.hp.com>]

A while back there was a discussion on the list about adding
elements to DocBook to make it more "help-friendly."  Norm
wrote a proposal[1], there was a bit of discussion (check out
the thread started in reference [1]), then things died down
after a few weeks.

At the last Docbook Technical Committee meeting [2] I brought
up the topic of online help tagging, and we decided to go to
the DocBook mailing list and restart this discussion to see
what interest, if any, there is in this topic.

To get things going, my view is that while it is possible to
develop online help in DocBook without any new elements (and
there are people who do exactly that), there are real benefits
to having help specific markup, and we should seriously look
at Norm's proposal (and alternatives).  The group I'm working
with has been using some extensions to DocBook for online help
and find that it makes editing help more intuitive for authors
and reduces confusion for writers who edit both online help and
other documents.  The jury's still out, but we're pleased with
the results so far.

Thanks,
Dick Hamilton
dick_hamilton@hp.com

[1] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200110/msg00082.html
[2] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200203/msg00069.html