Hi,
as I'm currently playing with DocBook assemblies, I'm wondering about the
"best practise" of referencing from one module into another.
The "classical" (or usual) way is to get the ID of your target resource and
put it into a linkend attribute of <xref/>. This establish a strong bond of a
single one-way ID/IDREF which can be checked during validation.
Of course, this method can still be used with assemblies. However, it seems to
me, as this method creates hard dependencies it makes maintaining all the
topics/modules a bit too hard.
For example, if you have several modules in your assembly file, referencing
back and forth, you can't be sure if the target resource is really "used".
Therefor you can't be sure to have a valid single result DocBook document
after the assemble process.
Thinking about assemblies and referencing, some issues are still unresolved to
me and leads me to the following questions:
(1) How do I reference to a chapter when I do not know if this
chapter will be included or not?
(2) Is there a "preferred" method which is still readable and
easy to maintain?
(3) How do I reference to a set of links where I do not know the
exact IDs?
For example, if I have a book with several topics and I want
to link only to topics which deal with the "DocBook5" realm?
I've though about this problem and can think of these solutions:
* An answer to (1) can be profiling. However, that raises another question:
which profiling attributes should I use? The output[1] element contains a
format attribute, but there is no equivalent attribute for the other DocBook
elements (see [2a,b]).
* TDG5.1[3] gives an example with the relationship element. This could be
another solution, but it is still unclear to me how does it fit into the whole
picture. Probably a stylesheet process can resolve any references.
* Another method could be extended XLinks, but I'm not sure how to use it in
this context.
To summarize it: on the one hand we have the strong ID/IDREF mechanism, but on
the other hand it seems we lack/need a more "soft referencing" mechanism. Or
in other words: we have one ID and many references to it, but on the contrary
there is no mechanism (really?) how do we write a reference which points to
only some IDs.
What do you think? Do you have used assemblies already and how do you deal
with referencing? Do I miss anything?
Thank you for your ideas. :-)
---- References
[1] http://www.docbook.org/tdg51/en/html/output.html
[2a] http://www.docbook.org/tdg51/en/html/ref-elements.html#common.attributes
[2a] http://www.docbook.org/tdg51/en/html/ref-
elements.html#common.effectivity.attributes
[3] http://www.docbook.org/tdg51/en/html/ch06.html#relationships
--
Gruß/Regards
Thomas Schraitle
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