Re: [docbook-apps] Tasks and Procedures

["Bob Stayton" <bobs at sagehill dot net>]

The current DocBook DTD considers task to be a block element, not part of
the hierarchy. In the general case, it is hard to treat a block element as
part of the hierarchy because some combinations can get confusing.  For
example, you can have a chapter that contains a task, followed by a para,
followed by a section.  If the task is treated as part of the section
hierarchy, how does the para fit in?  It is contained in the chapter, but
navigating to it would be strange.  And what happens when the chapter is
chunked into HTML files?

But if you impose your own usage rules, then it gets easier.  Think of
simplesect, which is a section that cannot contain another section, a leaf
node.  If you use task only where a simplesect is allowed, then you wouldn't
run into the strange hierarchy problems.  If you examine the stylesheets and
see how simplesect is handled, you could handle your tasks in a similar
manner.

That said, adding a new hierarchy element will require a lot of attention to
detail.  Simplesect is mentioned in about 30 of the DocBook XSL files, for
example.

It might be easier to put each task in its own section, with a role="task".
Then the stylesheet customization could respond to that role and ignore the
section title and use the task title for TOC, xrefs, and in the section
itself.  That might be a bit easier to customize.  You might be able to do
it by adding a templates in 'object.title.markup' mode and 'title.markup'
mode for that special section.

Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
DocBook Consulting
bobs@sagehill.net


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Scott L. Holmes" <scottlholmes@yahoo.com>
To: "Docbook-Apps" <docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 1:21 PM
Subject: [docbook-apps] Tasks and Procedures


> I'm a newbie but learning quickly. I've been
> working with Task and Procedure recently. As I
> compose a Task, it is usually going to be
> multiple pages long (lots of steps and substeps
> defined in multiple prerequesite procedures along
> with the Task Procedure). Then I'll have many of
> these lengthy Tasks in an article.
>
> I'd like the Task title to appear in the table of
> contents if possible. Right now I'm simply doing:
>
>     <task>
>       <title>Task: Review Inventory
> Worksheets</title>
>
> Maybe there's a way to work a section title in to
> get these to show up?  I haven't started my
> customization layer yet but I'm getting ready to.
>
>
> Now ideally, each Procedure would have a title
> and these titles would show up in the TOC as
> sub-headings.
>
> Anybody have thoughts on making lengthy tasks
> navigatable? My primary transformations are pdf
> and html btw.
>
> Thanks very much for your time.
>
> Scott
>
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