Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: SGML vs XML

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso at arbortext dot com>]

At 14:42 2002 07 30 -0700, Bob Stayton wrote:
>On Tue, Jul 30, 2002 at 01:43:54PM -0700, Paul Grosso wrote:
>> At 17:35 2002 07 30 +0200, Jirka Kosek wrote:
>> >Trevor Jenkins wrote:
>> >
>> >> > There's a suggested workaround here [4], [5].
>> >> > [4] http://www.dpawson.co.uk/docbook/styling/profiling.html
>> >> > [5] http://www.kosek.cz/xml/dboscon/profiling/frames.html
>> >> 
>> >> Thanks for those links. I lost them in a recent system failure. But this
>> >> "profiling" technique is, I believe, an obfuscation and that's something
>> >> that working on SGML has taught me to eschew. It has it's place but not in
>> >> the depths of a 500+ page manual.
>> >
>> >It works for documents with virtually any length. And there is also one
>> >advantage -- if you want conditional processing you are not forced to
>> >learn new syntax (SGML conditional sections) you just use attribute with
>> >some value.
>> 
>> I admit I haven't read the refs, but relative to marked sections, there
>> are limitations to using elements/attributes for profiling.
>> 
>> If the DTD requires exactly one title per chapter, there is no way using
>> element/attribute "profiling" that you can have two alternatives for the
>> title depending on the profiling, because that won't be allowed by the DTD.
>> 
>> With marked sections (organized so that only one of the marked section
>> keyword parameters evaluate to INCLUDE at any given time), you don't have
>> this problem.
>
>Actually, there is a workaround for this in XML using
>the <phrase> element.   You have one title element
>but put two phrase elements in it, which are profiled. 
>
><title>
><phrase role="foo">My Foo Product</phrase>
><phrase role="bar">My Bar Product</phrase>
></title>

Bob,

That's an interesting solution for titles in DocBook, but you aren't
saying that their is always going to be a workaround to this general
issue, are you?

I believe it is still the case that there is no element/attribute
solution to the general profiling scenario that works in all cases
that marked sections work.  Am I wrong?

paul