This is the mail archive of the docbook@lists.oasis-open.org mailing list for the DocBook project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

Re: curious about duplicated elements


On Sun, Aug 11, 2002 at 04:09:25PM +0200, Steffen Maier wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Aug 2002, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> >   as i peruse all of the elements, i was curious about the fact that
> > a <book> can directly contain a <title> element, but a <book> can also
> > contain a <bookinfo> element, which itself can contain a <title>.
> >
> >   this kind of duplication seems to be fairly rare -- a <book> can't
> > directly contain, for example, an <authorgroup>; that has to be
> > within the <bookinfo> element.  any reason why title, subtitle
> > and titleabbrev have this extra flexibility?
> 
> I think this comes from the distinction of meta data (title inside *info,
> e.g.  bookinfo) and non-meta data (e.g. title inside book) where the
> former is usually not represented in any form in printed output (therefore
> meta data) and the latter makes up material to be printed in the output
> format.

Well, much of the metadata in bookinfo is printed, on the
title page.  That's where the author information goes, for example.
In general, metadata is information *about* the book, rather
than part of the book's subject content.

I think title came first, and bookinfo was added later as a
way to collect the little bits of metadata that were
building up as DocBook evolved.  It is possible to have
a title in both places, but the stylesheet 'policy'
in XSL is to use bookinfo/title if that is
available, otherwise use title.

-- 

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
Publications Architect                      Santa Cruz, CA  95060
Technical Publications                      voice: (831) 427-7796
Caldera International, Inc.                 fax:   (831) 429-1887
                                            email: bobs@caldera.com


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]