Re: [ubl] Comments to UBL V2.0 main specification (CS sanity check 4) by JPLSC

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

Good morning, Saito, I too have reviewed your formatting comments.

At 2006-10-13 08:07 -0700, jon.bosak@sun.com wrote:
>With regard to your comments about style, please understand that
>we are now using the OASIS DocBook templates to generate the HTML
>output from an XML original.  In other words, the document itself
>(UBL-2.0.xml) has no inherent output format; the format is
>provided by the standard DocBook stylesheets as modified by OASIS
>for OASIS publications.  Consequently, we no longer have control
>over the appearance of the document.  For example, the placement
>of figure titles is dictated by the OASIS DocBook stylesheets, not
>by us.  Therefore the formatting issues you raise must be
>addressed by OASIS for all of its DocBook-based publications.

It happens I am the one collecting requirements 
for modifications to the DocBook-based publishing 
of OASIS specifications, and I will make note of 
your desire for the figure title placement to be 
after the figure, and I will compare this 
requirement with the other layouts available for OASIS specifications.

To date very little feedback has been reported 
regarding the DocBook presentation of OASIS 
specifications, and I would value any further 
observations JPLSC may wish to make on the OASIS stylesheets used by UBL.

The current version of these OASIS stylesheets can be found at:

   http://docs.oasis-open.org/templates/DocBook/spec-0.4/

The version as used by the UBL-2.0.xml hypertext 
document can be found in the db/ subdirectory of the UBL 2.0 release directory.

I anticipate releasing a revised version of the 
OASIS stylesheets based on feedback received.

>I see nothing that would prevent the JPLSC
>from implementing its formatting suggestions in its own
>publication of the specification.  I believe that this would apply
>even to the HTML version, as it, too, is just a generated artifact
>of the XML document.  Perhaps JPLSC members such as Justsystem can
>approach this task as an interesting technical challenge.

Note that the JPLSC can utilize the stylesheet 
modules provided in the db/ directory of UBL-2.0 
and create your own customization layer.  To do 
this you would create, say, 
UBL-2.0-JPLSC-html.xsl and import the 
UBL-2.0-html.xsl stylesheet.  Note there is a 
parameterization of the placement of titles that 
you can, then, specialize in your customization layer:

http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/doc/html/formal.title.placement.html

As Jon says, this would merely be your projection 
of the standardized XML document in a customized presentation.

>With regard specifically to your comment about possible ISO
>publication, I agree that there are problems here, but they are
>much more extensive than perhaps you are aware.

Note a number of publishing problems you cite I 
understand are related to figure dimensions, 
which would probably simply require resampling 
the diagrams at a different resolution.  This 
does not, however, address legibility, and future 
revisions of the documents may require some 
diagrams to be redrawn to address limitations in dimensions.

I hope this helps understand some of the issues you have brought to light.

. . . . . . . . . . Ken

--
UBL/XSLT/XSL-FO training: Allerød/Vårø Denmark 2006-11-13,17,20/24
UBL International 2006  2006-11-13/17 http://www.ublconference.com
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