Hi,
I have some answers.

1.  The docbook-xsl-ns stylesheets are DocBook 5.0 stylesheets.  If there is a 
5.0 element they don't support, that should be treated as a bug.

2.  DocBook 5.0 has been submitted to OASIS as a proposed OASIS Standard. It 
will take a couple of months to get through the review and voting period.  I 
don't have dates.

3.  If starting from scratch with DocBook 5 documents, then yes, it is better 
to start with the ns stylesheets.

4.  Actually, I think such a switch with FOP would be very nice.  8^)


Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
[email protected]


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Karen Schneider 
  To: [email protected] 
  Sent: Friday, May 08, 2009 8:22 AM
  Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] Docbook 5.0 and stylesheets


  I thought I'd try to get an update on the questions responded to in this 
thread from February (responses included below my sig file) because I've been 
asked questions about DocBook that I expect I'll hear more of as we continue to 
discuss the use of DocBook in our project. I also had to convince someone who 
tried xlstproc for the first time that yes, it does support 5.0.

  1. Will there be (are there) 5.0 stylesheets?

  2. Is there a projected timetable for DocBook 5 becoming an OASIS standard? 
(I know 4.5 is an OASIS standard.) 

  3. If we're starting from scratch (that is, have no legacy DocBook XML), is 
it better to use the namespace-aware stylesheets (the -ns versions)? 

  4. Any way to invoke a switch in xsltproc that says "relax, don't worry, this 
is actually working"? ;)

  -- 
  | Karen G. Schneider
  | Community Librarian
  | Equinox Software Inc. "The Evergreen Experts"
  | Toll-free: 1.877.Open.ILS (1.877.673.6457) x712
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  On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 3:35 AM, Camille Bégnis <[email protected]> wrote:

    Hello,

    indeed the picture is a bit blurry at the moment while docbook is migrating 
from 4.x to 5.0. Some points to try to answer your questions:

    - 4.x docbook will not evolve anymore, the current standard is now 5.0
    - 5.0 is not officially an OASIS standard yet, because of administrative 
reasons only
    - many people have been using exclusively 5.0 for more than a year without 
issues.
    - there are not really 5.0 stylesheets at the moment. Some work is being 
done on XSLT2 stylesheets, but this is not production ready I believe. So 4.x 
stylesheets have been adapted to be capable of handling 5.0 documents
    - 5.0 documents are not exactly processed back to 4.x: it is just that 
there is a first step that makes some adjustments to the document so it is 
correctly processed by the stylesheet. However this is transparent to the user. 
The user just apply the stylesheet once.
    - there is the namespace aware stylesheet version (-ns) that is specific to 
5.0 but basically based on the standard stylesheet.tax

    So in short: just apply current -ns stylesheet with xsltproc on your 
document.

    Concerning xincludes, the syntax is the same as in DB 4.x, just remember to 
use the namespace.

    All this is my vision of the issue, I will let experts precise or correct 
all  if necessary

    Camille.




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