Re: [docbook-apps] Entities references vs. XRef as a way to manage changingglossary

[Taro Ikai <tikai at ABINITIO dot COM>]

> I'm not clear on why entity references don't work here.
> In general, you want the entity references to resolve
> in the output.  So I presume you are doing an initial
> transformation of the XML to XML, in which you want to leave
> the entity references unresolved.  Is that correct?
> 
> If so, perhaps you could code the original entity references
> as "&entityname;".  This would transform to "&entityname;"
> after the first stage, and be available downstream.
> But perhaps I'm not understanding what you want to do.
> 

I want to defer the resolution of entity references (or
other comparable means of text parameterization) until 
I am ready to run it through one of the docbook-xsl stylesheets
for rendering.

There are several reasons. Among which:

1) I want to use my own XSL stylesheets to transform the 
   document structure, before I run one of the docbook-xsl 
   stylesheets. 

   At this point, I might check the document into CVS.
   I don't want to check in a document where the entity 
   references are already resolves.

2) Likewise, I sometimes want to import the document
   into FrameMaker. If the references are resolved, then 
   FrameMaker will not be able to import the references as 
   FrameMaker variable references, and consequently, I 
   cannot export the references back as entity references 
   in DocBook.

3) I want to use XSL or xmllint to canonicalize the document
   before I check it into CVS. Here again, I don't want to 
   lose the text parameterization in my document.

> Xref will only connect to id values in the current document.
> You would have to use olink to link to an external document.
> But in either case, you will end up with an active
> link associated with the text.  I'm not sure that is
> what you want.

I am aware of that olink produces an active link. I don't quite
understand the full scope of goals associated with olink. I do 
not want to get the active link, but I can't think of another
way to parameterize the text references that survives XSLT 
transformation.

>From my brief experiment with :

    <olink targetdocent="...">text</olink>

and htmlhelp.xsl, I got something like:

    <a href="/cgi-bin/olink?sysid=">text</a>

Why do I get this? I don't think HTML Help project can 
run cgi programs. 

Taro

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