Re: DOCBOOK: subsetting: excluding CALS table

[Tobias Reif <tobiasreif@pinkjuice.com>]

Paul Grosso wrote:
 >> The
 >> XHTML table model could be added as well. It could be in it's
 >> own namespace, or in DocBook's.
 >>
 > I agree.  But the TC just decided against this.

You mean right now? Minutes ago? This is sad news.

 > But "including the XHTML table model" while not removing the CALS
 > table
 >  model and still only having one DocBook DTD implies allowing both
 > kinds of tables in a document.

Sorry, I thought you were talking about mixing both model's elements in 
one table.

 > Which is just what I was suggesting
 >  but that didn't make it through the TC.  So as things stand now,
 > it's not going to happen.

Will the reasons/arguments be published?

 >> P.S. Excluding CALS tables in some future version would have one
 >> advantage: New tools could support 100% DocBook (including tables
 >>  etc) without having to deal with the complex CALS table model.
 >>
 > That's not an advantage for users, especially those with existing
 > docbook
 >  documents!

I'm aware of the fact that it would be a disadvantage for people with 
DocBook documents using CALS tables. But in the lifetime of a language, 
there can be cuts.
Process old content with old tools, or update old content (via some 
tool, but this could be lossy), process new content with new tools. But 
anyways, I don't think that CALS tables *must* be removed. People can 
disallow them locally (by subsetting the schema).

 > While I appreciate your point about tools and implementors
 >  (I'm an implementor too), it is generally more important to make
 > users life easier, not implementor's lives.  That's why I think we
 > should allow both kinds of tables.

OK, so there are at least four people in favour of adding XHTML tables 
to DocBook:
You, me, Norm (I think), Eve Maler, probably many more. What can we do? 
Simply publish DocBook+XHTMLTables? Simply use them, since they are in 
their own namespace? Write an XSLT transforming DocBook+XHTMLTables to 
DocBook(+CALSTables)?
The latter would allow people to author using simple XHTML tables, but 
feed CALS to validators and transformers. This translation could be 
(nearly) lossless, AFAICS.

Tobi

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