Re: DocBook

[Simon Pepping <spepping@scaprea.hobby.nl>]

On Tue, Jan 01, 2002 at 01:22:03PM +0100, Hans Hagen wrote:
> At 12:26 PM 12/30/2001 +0100, Simon Pepping wrote:
> >The idea has crossed my mind as well. Docbook has become the standard
> >for all sorts of technical documentation, and it would be nice if such
> >documentation could be formatted using Context. But it is a huge
> >undertaking indeed. One should start on a subset, there should be
> >agreement on which subset, and one should be prepared for a long
> >lasting project.
> 
> starting from a subset is doable; is there such a subset known? a quick 
> look into the oreilly's docbook book shows a lot of (probably never used) 
> stuff,

Not really. I guess article and book as document element are most
popular. But beyond that one has to make a choice which elements are
most relevant. There are indeed many elements which seem only useful
in exceptional cases.

I am currently getting some practice with XML in Context by creating a
mapping for a DocBook file by myself. Until now it is surprisingly
easy. The XML interface works fine. I guess it will become more
difficult if one needs to account for elements whose presence or
absence influences the layout.

Perhaps it would be best to take a number of existing DocBook
documentation files and construct a mapping that works for all of
them. That would give a mapping that might work for many elements and
that could be expanded gradually.

Simon

-- 
Simon Pepping
email: spepping@scaprea.hobby.nl