From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.comp.tex.context/18499 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Adam Lindsay" Newsgroups: gmane.comp.tex.context Subject: Re: ConTeXt and DocBook - beginner's questions Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:25:03 +0000 Message-ID: <20050225232503.4300@mail.comp.lancs.ac.uk> References: <20050225213240.GL2185@localhost.localdomain> Reply-To: mailing list for ConTeXt users NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1109373928 14991 80.91.229.2 (25 Feb 2005 23:25:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:25:28 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl Sat Feb 26 00:25:28 2005 Original-Received: from ronja.vet.uu.nl ([131.211.172.88] helo=ronja.ntg.nl) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1D4opl-00005j-OR for gctc-ntg-context-518@m.gmane.org; Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:25:21 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 99BFC1282A; Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:29:28 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from ronja.ntg.nl ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (ronja.vet.uu.nl [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 30916-02; Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:29:28 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from ronja.vet.uu.nl (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9039C12828; Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:25:07 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id E5E5212828 for ; Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:25:05 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from ronja.ntg.nl ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (ronja.vet.uu.nl [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 30750-02 for ; Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:25:04 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from mail.comp.lancs.ac.uk (mail.comp.lancs.ac.uk [148.88.3.45]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id CBFC512818 for ; Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:25:04 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from [192.168.31.100] (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mail.comp.lancs.ac.uk (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id j1PNP3AX008428 for ; Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:25:04 GMT Original-To: "mailing list for ConTeXt users" In-Reply-To: <20050225213240.GL2185@localhost.localdomain> X-Mailer: CTM PowerMail version 5.1 build 4340 English X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at ntg.nl X-BeenThere: ntg-context@ntg.nl X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: mailing list for ConTeXt users List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl Errors-To: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at ntg.nl X-MailScanner-From: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl X-MailScanner-To: gctc-ntg-context-518@m.gmane.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.comp.tex.context:18499 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.context:18499 Paul Tremblay said this at Fri, 25 Feb 2005 16:32:40 -0500: >> >> One of the key ideas to take away from ConTeXt's XML manual > www.pragma-ade.com/show-man-15.htm> is that there are *many* different >> paths to take when processing XML. > >But this makes me confused. Sorry, I was writing for a couple different people, and sometimes being expansive and descriptive ("look at all the possibilities!") is less useful than being prescriptive ("thou shalt..."), especially if you're a newcomer wondering about how (one way) to do things. Chances are, you'll find one or two favoured ways of doing things, and use that constellation of solutions for your documents. > You can have and . These namespaces contain elements with different levels of abstraction. ContML is higher-level, more structural, fx (just a demonstration, so far) was a bit more low-level, somewhere between ConTeXt and FO. >If I am understanding things correctly, each of these namespaces refers >to a document that already pre-defines the mapping. I could also make up >my own mapping, and use the namespace ? Yes. >Although this >allows each user to create his own XML vocabulary, This is one of the biggest blessings and curses of XML. Having helped design an ISO standard using XML, this had an immense effect on what we did. Yes, it's a standard, but how can we be sure that people don't try to create documents with other, private elements? > I would argue that >such an XML vocabulary already exists: FO. The FO XML language is >well-thought out and thorough. I see no sense in developing completely >differnt XML vocabularies as work arounds until fotex is mature enough >to handle the FO vocabulary directly. FO isn't for everyone. In fact, some here have a rather poor opinion of it. (I tend to agree, but let's try to steer away from a flame war.) However, XSL-FO is rather indisputably a page layout vocabulary, and not semantic/structured markup. If you're from the TEI world, I don't need to go further there. >Creating these workaround >vocabularies adds another layer to processing and seems to add to the >complexity of processing XML. Depends on the source format. I use that extended ContML as an intermediate format, because I'm converting from a much more complex file format that doesn't make the document structure very transparent. That suits my needs well. > It seems simpler to think in terms of raw >(non XML) ConTeXt. That way, if you have a question about formatting, >you will find the answer relatively easy on the mailing list. True. It's one of the reasons why I bring things to my intermediate format that corresponds with ConTeXt macros: I can break into expert ConTeXt to configure things when I want to get sophisticated. >I hope I am understanding things correctly. I want to develop a sound >XML => ConTeXt strategy, so don't want to overlook any of ConTeXt's >native XML abiblities. Different applications mean different strategies. I'm fairly confident you can find what you need somewhere in there... -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Adam T. Lindsay, Computing Dept. atl@comp.lancs.ac.uk Lancaster University, InfoLab21 +44(0)1524/510.514 Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK Fax:+44(0)1524/510.492 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-