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Subject: Re: DOCBOOK: where to store entity references


On Fri, Jul 12, 2002 at 02:54:56PM -0400, Erik Price wrote:
> I have two more (hopefully easy) questions...
> 
> I have a large file of internal general entity references that I have 
> made to save myself the trouble of hand-typing the same markup for 
> certain items in my documents that are repeated in many places.  This is 
> (AFAICT) the custom.
> 
> But I also have a few dozen external general entity references, which I 
> am using in imitation of the examples in "DocBook: The Definitive 
> Guide" -- each of my "sect1" elements is in its own file (for ease of 
> maintenance).  I have one "master" file, called "documentation.xml", 
> which consists of little more than a hierarchy of "book"s, "part"s, and 
> "chapter"s, and an external general entity reference within each chapter 
> for each "sect1" element.  In other words, this file has the structure, 
> whereas the subfiles have all of the meat.
> 
> Since I am not including an internal DTD (rather I am using the DocBook 
> DTD), I haven't made any entity declarations in my document yet.  I am 
> assuming that I can do them within the system identifier, like this:
> 
> <!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN" 
> "system.identifier"
> [
> 	<!ENTITY ent1 SYSTEM "path/to/file">
> 	<!ENTITY ent2 SYSTEM "path/to/file">
> 	<!ENTITY ent3 SYSTEM "path/to/file">
> ]
>  >
> 
> Instead of putting all of the entities directly at this point, can I 
> just keep them in their separate file and declare an entity reference to 
> the file full of entity declarations?  Like this:
> 
> <!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN" 
> "system.identifier"
> [
> 	<!ENTITY entityfile SYSTEM "path/to/file">
> 	&entityfile;
> ]
>  >
> 
> Now will all of my entities (in that file) be "included" into the 
> document?

Yes, you can do this, but it must be with a parameter
entity, which is used for entity references
within the DTD:

<!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN" 
"system.identifier"
[
	<!ENTITY % entityfile SYSTEM "path/to/file">
	%entityfile;
]

> 
> 
> The other question I have is, can I specify a relative path to a file in 
> an external general entity reference?  Like above?  Or should it start 
> with "./path/to/file" to indicate "current working directory"?
> 
> Or must those paths be absolute?

Relative is ok.

-- 

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
Publications Architect                      Santa Cruz, CA  95060
Technical Publications                      voice: (831) 427-7796
Caldera International, Inc.                 fax:   (831) 429-1887
                                            email: bobs@caldera.com


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