Re: Allowing other namespaced content in info

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

/ Scott Hudson <scott.hudson@flatironssolutions.com> was heard to say:
| Fellow DocBook enthusiasts,
| I would like to propose that we allow elements from other namespaces in the info
| elements for DocBook v5.0. Info should be allowed to contain additional
| elements from any other namespace with the processing
| expectation that they are not used for rendering.

This seems reasonable to me. I've certainly extended DocBook to support
other namespaces in info elements on more than one occasion.

| For example:
| <section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook";>
|   <title>Example of multiple namespaced content in <markup>info</markup></title>
|   <info>
|       <rdf:RDF
| xmlns:prism="http://prismstandard.org/namespaces/basic/1.0/";
|         xmlns:prl="http://prismstandard.org/namespaces/prl/1.0/";
|         xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#";
|         xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";
|         xmlns:o-ex="http://odrl.net/1.1/ODRL-EX";
|         xmlns:o-dd="http://odrl.net/1.1/ODRL-DD";>
|         <rdf:Description
| rdf:about="http://scottysengineeringlog.net/sample.xml";>
|           <dc:language>en-US</dc:language>
|           <dc:creator>Scott C. Hudson</dc:creator>
|           <dc:subject>XML, DocBook</dc:subject>
|           <o-ex:rights>
|             <o-ex:agreement>
...

That's certainly one possibility, and entirely within the scope of the
proposed change. But I can't help commenting on it :-)

Embedding rdf:RDF inside info seems like overkill. And giving the
rdf:Description the URI "http://scottysengineeringlog.net/sample.xml";
means that the data it contains is *about .../sample.xml* and not
(necessarily) about the section that contains it.

If I were doing this, I'd have simply said:

<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook";
         xmlns:prism="http://prismstandard.org/namespaces/basic/1.0/";
         xmlns:prl="http://prismstandard.org/namespaces/prl/1.0/";
         xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#";
         xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";
         xmlns:o-ex="http://odrl.net/1.1/ODRL-EX";
         xmlns:o-dd="http://odrl.net/1.1/ODRL-DD";>
  <info>
     <title>Example of multiple namespaced content in
            <markup>info</markup></title>
     <author><personname>Scott C. Hudson</personname></author>
     <dc:language>en-US</dc:language>
     <dc:subject>XML, DocBook</dc:subject>
     <o-ex:rights>
       <o-ex:agreement>
       ...

Note that I've used a proper DocBook author element instead of
dc:creator. If you want to extract dc:creator from the author as part
of your processing, that's fine, but using foreign namespaces to
shadow DocBook elements doesn't seem like good practice to me. I also
moved the title inside the info, but that's perhaps unnecessary
consistency :-)

If you *do* want the rdf:Description wrapper, I strongly encourage you
to say <rdf:Description rdf:about=""> so that the metadata is about
its container. Though even this only works if the physical storage is
at the section level. Best to avoid the wrapper altogether and build
the metadata directly from the info contents, I think.

| One question that has been raised, is whether a separate <foreign> element
| should be introduced as a child of info, that could contain this kind of
| namespaced information or not?
| Thoughts?

I think that's unnecessary and confusing. The info wrapper is already
a pretty jumbled bag. Few processes use *all* of it and any process
can use only db:* where it currently uses *, if that's necessary.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

--
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | There is always some accident in
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | the best of things, whether
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | thoughts or expressions or deeds.
                                   | The memorable thought, the happy
                                   | expression, the admirable deed are
                                   | only partly yours.--Henry David
                                   | Thoreau

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