Re: [docbook] Marking up generated content

["Rowan Rodrik van der Molen" <bigsmoke at home dot nl>]

> Hi,
>
> I'm looking for a good way to markup generated content, i.e. sections
> that get updated resp. replaced just before publication by an additional
> processing step. Things likely to get automatically replaced are the
> current date, a processor identification or the geographical location of
> the publishing machine.
>
> In some pseudo XML, this would look like:
>
> <para>
>   Signed <gentext type="Location.City">Munich</gentext>,
>   <gentext type="Date.Long">November 25, 2003</gentext>: Christian
> </para>
> <para>
>   (Processed by <gentext type="Processor.Name">XalanJ 2.5.2</gentext>
>   at <gentext type="Time.Short">23:10</gentext>)
> </para>
>
> In lieu of the <gentext> elements in the above, should I simply use
> <phrase> with a custom role attribute? <replaceable> seems to have
> different semantics and therefore seems not to be a good choice here.
>
> I'm also looking at making it obvious to the author of the "template"
> DocBook document that manual changes to the contents of the <gentext>
> elements will be discarded at publishing time, so he better not wasted
> any time on doing it.
>
> Are there any general rules or best practices for accomplishing this?

Personally, I tend to use custom XML processing instructions for this,
since these are clearly targetted at ... a processor.

For your example I'd use something like the following mark-up:

<para>
  Signed <?gentext Location.City ?>,
  <?gentext Date.Long ?>: Christian
</para>
<para>
  (Processed by <?gentext Processor.Name ?>
  at <?gentext Time.Short ?>)
</para>

Of course you could use pseudo-attributes, like in
"<?gentext type='Location.City' default='Munich' ?>"

But these are just my own preferences. Others might do things differently.

Sincerely,

 - Rowan

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