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RE: Technical DTDs vs. non-technical


Terry,

There is one thing that I am not clear on, with respect to DocBook.

Lets keep using plays as an example where abilities get stretched.  One very
important aspect of plays, that you wont find in computer documentation, is
the concept of 'voice'.

Plays are concerned with 'first person', 'omnipresence', ect..  History
books are concerned with the <DocAuthor> spending a whole lot of time
referencing and talking about other authors and historical figures. It is
not always a simple two-way conversation either.  I find myself documenting
authors quoting authors that are quoting other authors frequently.  At this
point, it gets confusing. 

The two concepts are similar in Plays and documentary style texts.  I am not
clear on how DocBook addresses this, or if it does at all.

I think you will agree that it is important in both instances (plays and
history) that it is important for a computer to be able to identify who is
talking, and who is being talked about.

Al

-----Original Message-----
From: Terry Allen [mailto:tallen@sonic.net]
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2000 5:37 PM
To: docbook@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: DOCBOOK: Technical DTDs vs. non-technical

>DocBook was "primarily written for books about computer software and
hardware". "Because its main structures correspond to the general notion of
what constitutes a "book,", it is assumed that it automatically addresses
the needs of Literature in general.

Not really; it was a design goal (of mine) to make Docbook suitable
also for scholarly publishing.  So if you toss out all the computer-
related inlines and structures, and ignore some things like QandASet
that you probably don't need, you ought to have a DTD that you can
use to format a scholarly book.  If you find deficiencies we'd
like to hear of them.  

Several folks pointed you to TEI, and remarked that it's mostly 
oriented to analysis - and if that's what you want, then you should
use TEI.  For example, if you want to mark up <couplet> you need
TEI; if you only want to typeset a poem, <literallayout> will do.

TEI also covers genres Docbook doesn't, such as plays and (I think)
dictionary entries.  

regards, Terry

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