*** NOTE : First time poster. Sorry for any unintentional
blasphemies, heresies, and/or sacrileges. O:-)
Hello,
I started playing with DocBook when version 5 was in a Release
Candidate (RC) status. One thing that I immediately noticed was that
it replaced (or modified) existing linking structures to use XLink.
This pleased me. Then I read the following quote from the Transition
Guide (after Example 2 under "Relaxing with DocBook"): "As you can
see, DocBook V5.0 is built on top of existing XML standards as much as
possible." This is great stuff.
I would like to see this thinking pushed even further. I was working
on the documentation for an open-source project the other day, and I
was stricken with the amount of copy-pasted markup for author
information. I thought to myself, "Well, why don't we just put all
the authors in one file and reference them?"
And then I thought:
"Well, since the <author> element contains contact info for a person
or an organization, and
the VCard standard contains contact information for a person or
organization,
wouldn't it be great if I could just put all the authors / editors /
etc. in one directory as Vcards and then put something like <author
vcard="doe.john.vcf" /> in the DocBook source?"
Benefits:
Info for authors / editors / etc. would not be become inconsistent
across multiple files
Easier for editors working on <authors> in DocBook, since they simply
reference a Vcard
Easier for authors, since they only have to worry about updating their
Vcard, rather than a potentially long list of items like "I wrote this
chapter, and this chapter, but not this chapter; and I wrote this
section within this chapter…" and so on.
Reuses an existing standard.
Well, Vcards are an existing standard; but upon revisiting the quote I
cited earlier, it says "DocBook V5.0 is built on top of existing XML
standards as much as possible."
No problem. See Representing vCard Objects in RDF/XML for RDF/XML;
and the subsection "6. vCard in XML" deals with Vcards as XML without
the RDF. (See also "XEP-0054: vcard-temp", the XML spec for Vcards
"in the Jabber community.")
Bonus points if this could also be accomplished with FOAF as well!
(Example: <author vcard="doe.john.vcf" foaf="doe.john.foaf" />)
—Tony
