Re: [docbook] author

[maxwell <maxwell@umiacs.umd.edu>]

On 2015-12-16 16:00, Richard Hamilton wrote:
> ...you can have an authorgroup that has just one author.

I don't see any problem with that.  In fact, it's what I'd do if I were 
starting a new DocBook doc, even if there was initially only one author, 
because it leaves a way to add additional authors/editors/etc. later.

> The standard stylesheets appear to favor authorgroup when they
> encounter both authorgroup and author. That is, from my quick test, it
> looks like they simply ignore author if an authorgroup exists...

This to me *is* a problem.  (I'm actually using dblatex instead of the 
standard stylesheets, and I don't recall what the dblatex does out of 
the box.  We had modified it for our own stylesheets, and that's when I 
realized we had a problem with both ways of inputting an author.)

> All that said, it might make sense in your environment to either add a
> schematron rule...

I'm actually not familiar with Schematron, and it would be about the 
15th computer language I would need to deal with.  I.e. I'd rather not 
try to write up such a rule myself.  So if someone on this list wants to 
do that, it would make me happy.  That is: if an <info> element (or any 
other element) has both <authorgroup> and <author> as immediate 
daughters, raise a warning.  Similarly for <authorgroup> and any of its 
other potential daughters.

The alternative would be to make <authorgroup> the obligatory parent of 
<author>.  But obviously that would break a lot of existing documents.

Also, what is the preferred tool for validating an XML document against 
a list of Schematron rules?  We use XMLMind for creating most of our 
docs, but it would be nice to have a tool that could be called from the 
command line to do that.  The Schematron website lists two: Amara, which 
hasn't been updated since 2006 (which I guess could mean "stable"), and 
"UBL interim", whose website has disappeared.

   Mike Maxwell
   University of Maryland