Re: DOCBOOK: Request for comments: adding a Fileoutput element (R FE613293)

[Yann Dirson <ydirson at fr dot alcove dot com>]

On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 09:30:57AM +0100, Schlienger, Marc wrote:
> >  2. add a new attribute to Literallayout, with either 'filecontents' or
> >     various filetypes being among its enumerated values[3].
> > 
> 	[Schlienger, Marc]  the disadvantage of this one isn't such a big
> issue, don't you think? Subclassing for other files than programs should not
> be so important for DocBook, since it is original purpose was to document
> Software Documentation. There could simply be a generic attribute for all
> kind of non-program related files. I could live with this one.

One could see the need to subclass into "configfile", "logfile",
"changelogfile" and such, some of which could be easily pretty-printed
according to the class.  With this solution, one loses the generic
"filecontents" meaning, and a toolchain that would not know about,
say, "logfile", won't even be able to present it as a "filecontents".


> 	We could come up to the question: why isn't there a more general
> version of DocBook for standard documentation like reports, novels, etc.? I
> believe many people are trying DocBook for these purposes, not only for
> Software Doc. DocBook could be a specific type of this GeneralDocBook.

Maybe something like an easily-reusable core DTD, consisting of
dbhier.mod and of general-purpose subset of the rest, with the
"standard" DocBook (and possibly other ones) being a customisation
layer above it ?


-- 
Yann Dirson <Yann.Dirson@fr.alcove.com>                 http://www.alcove.com/
Technical support manager                Responsable de l'assistance technique
Senior Free-Software Consultant          Consultant senior en Logiciels Libres
Debian developer (dirson@debian.org)                        Développeur Debian