Re: DOCBOOK: Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Help - Reseting the chapter numbering

[Norman Walsh <ndw at nwalsh dot com>]

/ Bob Stayton <bobs@sco.COM> was heard to say:
| I must admire your ambitious intuition. If I understand
| your idea, you would basically be writing a stylesheet
| generating system, based on input parameters provided by
| the user.  You could sell something like that.

Not a totally general solution, just a specific one for DocBook.  Take
a look at the template directory and titlepage.* in the html and print
directories.

| I'm not clear why you would want to use XSLT
| to implement it, though.  I get confused enough with
| XSLT writing out HTML. Using XSLT to write XSLT
| that writes HTML gives me a headache. ;^)

Yes, it's a challenge.

| It would be great if it works, that is, does what
| each user wants. But if it doesn't, I think tracing
| through why something doesn't work might be difficult.
| It might end up being a black box that only you
| can support.  But, hey, if you think you can pull it
| off, most people would love it.

I am concerned about that aspect. But it will be so much easier
than explaining to novices that they need to write a driver
by hand to make something simple work differently.

Because XSLT is less programmable than DSSSL, I find it much harder to
build in parameters.

| Myself, I would be happy if you used variables wherever
| possible, and keep using XSLT "subroutines" like those in
| common.xsl to modularize particular functions.  If
| necessary, I can create a modified template or subroutine
| to perform a customization that your parameters don't
| support.  These go in the driver file that imports your
| main stylesheet file, so that your distribution files don't
| need to be touched.  Your job is to keep the templates from
| interacting with each other too much.  That way I can make
| small changes that don't break something else.

Exactly. And even if I implement the template system, I would always
work to preserve that aspect.

| It isn't that hard to modify a template that someone else
| wrote if it is well documented.  I would like to see more
| of your <doc:template> elements inside the stylesheets
| explaining how things work.  I would be willing to
| contribute to that effort.  Think of your stylesheets as
| one of the biggest and most accessible XSL training grounds
| available.  They exercise a lot of the XSL spec,
| and people learn quickly by example.

You're right. Thanks for the encouragement.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | certain: adj., insufficiently analyzed
http://nwalsh.com/            |