Re: DOCBOOK: external entities cannot be valid?

[Norman Walsh <ndw at nwalsh dot com>]

/ Bob Stayton <bobs@sco.com> was heard to say:
| It appears that external parsed entities cannot be
| valid XML.  Someone please prove me wrong.

Uh, I'm not sure what you mean. A document that uses external
parsed entities can certainly be valid.

| Option A: Leave out the doctype declaration from the
[...]
| 
| Option B: Include the doctype declaration in each chapter
[...]

You couldn't do this with SGML, either, so I'm a little
confused.

| Option C: Leave out the doctype declaration in each chapter
[...]

Well, even worse than that is the fact that you can't do this:

<!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "..." "..." [
<!ENTITY chapter SYSTEM "...">
]>
&chapter;

Option C is very troublesome to implement.

| I very much want my writers keeping their chapter documents
| valid at all times, by using a validating XML editor.
| I want each file validated when it is checked into
| revision control to prevent problems with our documentation
| builds.
| 
| There must be some way to accomplish this, isn't there?

Personally, I use option A and do validity checking against the
whole book (er, except when I'm using Adept/Epic which allows you
to have your cake and eat it too in this regard :-), but in your
environment, it sounds like B is probably slightly easier for
your authors, you just need to automate the book-building process
with Makefiles or a script or something.


                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | The First Amendment is often
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | inconvenient. But that is besides
Member, DocBook Editorial Board    | the point. Inconvenience does not
                                   | absolve the government of its
                                   | obligation to tolerate
                                   | speech.--Justice Anthony Kennedy,
                                   | in 91-155