Re: DOCBOOK: full recursive docbook

[Bob Stayton <bobs at sco dot com>]

On Mon, Mar 17, 2003 at 03:14:57PM +0100, Frédéric Glorieux wrote:
> By advance thanks for your reactivity.
> 
> I need to propose a schema for an organisation
> They have probably a few hundred thousands of documents (size of an
> article) in various forms, not often XML (a nightmare). Docbook seems to
> answer most of their needs.
> 
> Object of this question: 
> 
> One law of their systems is the fully recursive linking from an article
> to children.
> The tree could be very long (It's about architectural heritage)
> One example from one of their orgdiv
> country/region/department/city/monuments/monument/monument-part/objects/
> object/object-part
> Sometimes it's full path, sometimes not, sometimes other paths.
> 
> 	They would like to keep publishing abilities at each point, to
> any depth. Be able to build valid docbook everywhere could be nice. 
> 
> Is there an already docbook solution for such a problem?
> If not, I got a partial proposition but...

You can set up modular docbook files using recursive
'section' elements.  You can use XInclude to assemble them
as needed.  You can use olinks to form links between them.

The olink database (an XML file) can also be used as a
database of content that can be machine processed to build
a container document that assembles the content you want.
Any children would also be made into nested container documents.
For example:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE section PUBLIC ...>
<section id="startingpoint">
<title>Starting point</title>
<para>Stuff for this starting file</para>
<xi:include href="firstchild.xml" xmlns:xi="..." />
<xi:include href="secondchild.xml" xmlns:xi="..." />
...
</section>

and each of firstchild.xml etc. would also be
similarly assembled.

With such deep nesting, you will likely run into
issues of how to format titles for very deep
hierarchies.  The current XSL stylesheets only
go about 6 levels deep.

See the following doc for more on modular docbook:

http://www.sagehill.net/xml/docbookxsl/ModularDoc.html
http://www.sagehill.net/xml/docbookxsl/Olinking.html

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
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                                            email: bobs at sco dot com