DOCBOOK: details of DocBook versioning policy

["Matt G." <matt_g_ at hotmail dot com>]

After reading everything I could find, on the subject of the DocBook DTD 
versioning policy, I still have a few unanswered questions.

Isn't there a possibility that a patch release will alter the DTD in an 
incompatible fashion, such that a valid XML DocBook x.y.z document might not 
be valid for x.y.(z+n) (for n > 0)?  Or is this explicitly prevented, 
requiring that the issue be addressed in the next major revision?  If the 
latter, then it would seem convenient to treat minor revisions as RCS branch 
revisions, such that it aliases to the latest patch of that minor rev (e.g. 
4.1 would presently alias 4.1.2).  This would also mean that there should 
never be an actual release without a patch term, in the version ID (e.g. 5.1 
wouldn't be valid, but 5.1.0 would).

If the above versioning policy is followed, then documents should only 
reference a specific minor revision, while the application is free to use 
the latest compatible patch/superset.  This could be done through catalog 
files.


I was also wondering whether it's possible that stylesheets (DSSSL or XSL) 
might be dependent on a minimum minor revision (e.g. requiring DTD version 
4.7 or greater), or should the only dependency they have be on the major 
revision (e.g. requiring version 4 of the DTD)?


Matt


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