Re: DOCBOOK: DocBook-XML and conditional sections

[Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer at pasteur dot fr>]

On Tuesday 28 September 1999, at 7 h 5, the keyboard of Norman Walsh 
<ndw@nwalsh.com> wrote:

> Or you could use an SGML solution :-), as opposed to an XML
> solution, and use conditional sections. 

I would like to be able to use purely-XML tools in the future (and may be 
XSL). Of course, I can always normalize and get rid of unwanted sections 
before, but it becomes complicated.

> | 2) A DocBook-customization solution: Creating new elements <version2.1> and
...
> This would be really, really hard.

I'm glad, I thought I was stupid :-)

> There are already about five attributes for this purpose. You might get
> away with using one of them: Arch, Conformance, OS, UserLevel, and Vendor.

I don't see which one to use for a revision level ("Revision" refers to the 
level of the document, not the level of the software we document.) May be 
using "OS"?

>   <title><phrase arch="X86">Frobbing your X86 Processor</phrase>
>     <phrase arch="PPC">Frobbing your PowerPC Processor</phrase>
>   </title>

I see. I would say it is acceptable for me.

> I think your best bet for XML is to use the effectivity
> attributes, although it's a far from perfect solution,
> clearly. 

I will have to modify the stylesheet I use (your DocBook Modular Stylesheets, DSSSL version), to ignore or include elements, based on the attributes' value. Any idea on the best way to do it? I don't see anything in the DocBook Modular Stylesheets' documentation and it doesn't seem obvious: the common attributes can be in all elements.