Thanks for that - although simplesect is limited in not allowing us to have subsections within the content group, that would do what we want for the leaf parts that we'd like to customise.
Bob Stayton in the Docbook mailing list explained to me why the element I'm describing would be hard to implement - you wouldn't be able to specify what elements could be validly contained within my hypothetical contentgroup element, because that would depend on the context in which the contentgroup was placed - its parent could potentially be a chapter, section, sect1..n, simplesect, etc. However, I might try and add such a contentgroup element for deployment in the limited context that we need it - In the Docbook 5 RELAX schema I could create a contentgroup tag, and say "this can contain everything a section can, and can appear anywhere a section can". Hopefully I can remove the contentgroup elements during the profiling phase (or in a separate preprocessing step) so that the XSLT templates don't get confused. Thanks, Geraint North Principal Engineer Transitive On 10 Sep 2007, at 17:18, Hussein Shafie wrote: > Geraint North wrote: >> (slightly off-topic as far as XXE goes - please let me know if >> there's somewhere else more appropriate for discussions such as this) >> As I start to use Docbook in anger, there are a couple of things >> that I miss in the spec that I've had to add myself, including two >> seemingly generic ones: >> - Directory Tree Representations >> We often want to include example directory trees in our >> documentation. I've added the obvious tags (directory, disk, >> file) that can nest in the obvious way and include 'name' and >> 'description' tags. I've modified the Docbook XSL stylesheets to >> produce, (IMVHO) stunningly beautiful PDFs. :-) >> http://geraintnorth.com/docbook_directories.pdf > > Gorgeous! > > > >> This seems too generic and useful to waste - how much hassle is it >> likely to be for me to try and get these rolled into docbook? > > No idea. I've never customized DocBook 5 (and would not even > attempt to customize DocBook 4). > > > >> - A profiling container for a set of para elements. >> Our product ships in a number of different platforms, and thus our >> (mostly common) documentation uses profiling (with the arch >> attribute) so that we can build each variant as required. Often, >> whole sections are different (e.g. installation instructions vary >> between Linux and Solaris versions of our product). >> Now, we can't do this: >> <section xml:id="Installation" arch = "Linux"> >> <title>Installation</title> >> <para>...</para> >> <para>...</para> >> <para>...</para> >> </section> >> <section xml:id="Installation" arch = "Solaris"> >> <title>Installation</title> >> <para>...</para> >> <para>...</para> >> <para>...</para> >> </section> >> ...because you can't have two elements with the same xml:id, but >> we need the xml:id to be consistent so that our cross-references >> work cleanly. >> What I want to do is this: >> <section xml:id="Installation"> >> <title>Installation</title> >> <contentgroup arch = "Linux"> >> <para>...</para> >> <para>...</para> >> <para>...</para> >> </contentgroup> >> <contentgroup arch = "Solaris"> >> <para>...</para> >> <para>...</para> >> <para>...</para> >> </contentgroup> >> </section> >> But as far as I can see, there is no <contentgroup> equivalent, so >> it looks like we'll have to do this: >> <section xml:id="Installation"> >> <title>Installation</title> >> <para arch = "Linux">...</para> >> <para arch = "Linux">...</para> >> <para arch = "Linux">...</para> >> <para arch = "Solaris">...</para> >> <para arch = "Solaris">...</para> >> <para arch = "Solaris">...</para> >> </section> >> Which is cumbersome and likely to be bug-prone over time. Am I >> missing anything in the docbook spec, or is there really nothing >> that fulfils the requirements of my contentgroup? How do other >> people work around this? > > May be simplesect? http://www.docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/simplesect.html > > <section xml:id="Installation"> > <simplesect arch = "Linux"> > <title>Installation</title> > <para>...</para> > <para>...</para> > <para>...</para> > </simplesect> > > <simplesect arch = "Solaris"> > <title>Installation</title> > <para>...</para> > <para>...</para> > <para>...</para> > </simplesect> > </section> > > -- > XMLmind XML Editor Support List > xmleditor-support at xmlmind.com > http://www.xmlmind.com/mailman/listinfo/xmleditor-support
