RE: DOCBOOK: Technical DTDs vs. non-technical

[Terry Allen <tallen at sonic dot net>]

Laurie Mann wrote:
| 
| I agree with Alvaro; while DocBook can be "stretched" a little
| to go beyond "just" technical documentation, the implication that
| it can be meaningfully used for plays and the like isn't realistic.

I wrote, not implied, specifically that it is not suited for
plays, but was for scholarly books.

| It's also something of a misuse of XML, because the entities
| are no longer semantically associated with the meaning enbedded
| in the document.

You don't mean entity, you mean element type name.  And it is no
abuse of XML to make it do whatever you want - it's not a design
goal of Docbook to help you, though.  

In Docbook the element type names are deliberately mnemonic,
but there are some neutral ones, such as phrase.  All element
types have role attributes on them for local customization,
and if you can keep your private semantic labels unique, you
can create a whole set of elements suited to your purpose.
That does not abuse semantics, it's just not as useful as
semantics attached to nonneutral element types.

| For example, the idea of a "character" (not in the ASCII sense) is
| central to a play.  So is the idea of a "setting".  The only way
| to tag this using DocBook is to use attributes.  But that's not
| the best way.  You can always look at Jon Bosak's DTD for
| plays for examples.

I never said otherwise.