Re: DOCBOOK: What is included in a <set>?

[Bob Stayton <bobs@caldera.com>]

On Tue, Oct 15, 2002 at 12:11:23PM -0700, Tom Olsen wrote:
> I'd like to make a <set> of our books so that links between them will work.
> TDG gives the following example:
> 
> <!DOCTYPE set ...>
> <set><title>The Perl Series</title>
> <setinfo>...</setinfo>
> <book><title>Learning Perl</title> ... </book>
> <book><title>Programming Perl</title ... </book>
> 
> ...
> 
> </set>
> 
> Question #1: What appears where the ellipses are between <book> and </book>?
> Can I include the current book file via entity? Should I include the entire
> contents of the book file? The whole book?

Yes, if you set it up this way:

<!DOCTYPE set ... [
<!ENTITY book1 SYSTEM "mybook1.ent">
<!ENTITY book2 SYSTEM "mybook2.ent">
]>
<set><title>The Perl Series</title>
<setinfo>...</setinfo>
&book1;
&book2;

...

</set>

Here "mybook1.ent" is a system entity that includes
the <book> </book> tags.

> Question #2: Does the DTD Declaration in the <set> file supplant the DTD
> Declaration in each book file?

You can use entities to pull in the book content, but
you can't use your current book file if it has a DOCTYPE
declaration.  System entities must not have a DOCTYPE.

If this is XML (not SGML), then you can use XInclude.  It
lets you pull in content from valid book files (with
DOCTYPEs).  For a description of how to use XInclude, see:

http://www.sagehill.net/xml/docbookxsl/ModularDoc.html


-- 

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
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                                            email: bobs@caldera.com