Re: [docbook] Re: Ruminations on the future of DocBook

[Jirka Kosek <jirka at kosek dot cz>]

Tobias Reif wrote:

> > But suppose I could,
> > how would you propose to formally describe the structures that are
> > valid. What constitutes valid is not an academic question, it has
> > direct bearing on how tools work.
>
> I'm not sure what I meant back then, but I do think that there should be 
> one normative schema included in the spec (eg a normative/official RNG).
> I guess what I meant was that tools processing DocBook documents should 
> not be required to support any specific schema language (eg requiring 
> WXS+PSVI support for conformance). DTD support is required through the 
> XML spec, but ideally the DBX spec should avoid building on this type of 
> dependency.

Having formal syntax description of DocBook in some language (e.g. 
RelaxNG) as normative part of DocBook standard doesn't mean that tools 
must be RelaxNG aware. Many RFCs uses EBNF syntax diagrams to precisely 
define syntax of protocols but that doesn't imply that you must use some 
sort of EBNF code generator when programming your own implementation of 
that protocol.

I definitively think that DocBook standard should formally, precisely 
and unambiguously define DocBook grammar and this can't be done without 
some sort of formal language. AFAIK the best language for this is RNG at 
these days.

					Jirka

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  Jirka Kosek  	
  e-mail: jirka@kosek.cz
  http://www.kosek.cz

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