DOCBOOK: re: Modularity and PE reorganization

["Matt G." <matt_g_ at hotmail dot com>]

> From: Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>
> To: docbook@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: DOCBOOK: Modularity and PE reorganization
> Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2002 10:44:28 -0400
>
> I spent some time this weekend with several hundred little slips of
> paper[1] making a stab at a more logical set of parameter entities (or
> at least, of classes) for DocBook.
Wouldn't using physical tokens, for each element, imply that they can only 
belong to one class or module?  Certainly, where multiple interpretations of 
a term exist (e.g. "module", "class", "package", etc.), some duplication is 
acceptable and should even be encouraged.  Using separate namespaces (if 
possible) for each module would help disambiguate collisions (for purposes 
of authoring, documenting, and processing, actually).

Hopefully, allowing duplication of elements would eliminate nearly all of 
the tough classification decisions.  Furthermore, being able to put them in 
different namespaces would allow their content models to differ.


Anyhow, one thing I noticed about your categorization is that you put a 
number of document structures in a "publishing" class (e.g. figure, 
blockquote), yet you put things I consider to be publishing (i.e. referring 
to a context outside of the document) in a "core" class (e.g. edition, 
pubdate, publisher, issuenum).  I think the fundamental blocks found in all 
types of documents (e.g. para, figure, etc.) should form the core, while 
larger-scale blocks (e.g. chapter, part, article) would go in a 'document' 
class (as opposed to a website class, letter class, resume class, etc.).  
Then, domain-specific terms (with publishing being considered a domain) 
should go in their own modules (BTW, I'd put revhistory in publishing).


Thank you for considering my feedback.


Matt Gruenke


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