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Re: Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Help - Reseting the chapter numbering
- To: Bob Stayton <bobs at sco dot com>
- Subject: Re: DOCBOOK: Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Help - Reseting the chapter numbering
- From: Norman Walsh <ndw at nwalsh dot com>
- Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 19:31:36 -0400
- Cc: docbook at lists dot oasis-open dot org
- References: <10010111537.aa12333@mammoth.sco.com>
/ Bob Stayton <bobs@sco.COM> was heard to say:
| I must admire your ambitious intuition. If I understand
| your idea, you would basically be writing a stylesheet
| generating system, based on input parameters provided by
| the user. You could sell something like that.
Not a totally general solution, just a specific one for DocBook. Take
a look at the template directory and titlepage.* in the html and print
directories.
| I'm not clear why you would want to use XSLT
| to implement it, though. I get confused enough with
| XSLT writing out HTML. Using XSLT to write XSLT
| that writes HTML gives me a headache. ;^)
Yes, it's a challenge.
| It would be great if it works, that is, does what
| each user wants. But if it doesn't, I think tracing
| through why something doesn't work might be difficult.
| It might end up being a black box that only you
| can support. But, hey, if you think you can pull it
| off, most people would love it.
I am concerned about that aspect. But it will be so much easier
than explaining to novices that they need to write a driver
by hand to make something simple work differently.
Because XSLT is less programmable than DSSSL, I find it much harder to
build in parameters.
| Myself, I would be happy if you used variables wherever
| possible, and keep using XSLT "subroutines" like those in
| common.xsl to modularize particular functions. If
| necessary, I can create a modified template or subroutine
| to perform a customization that your parameters don't
| support. These go in the driver file that imports your
| main stylesheet file, so that your distribution files don't
| need to be touched. Your job is to keep the templates from
| interacting with each other too much. That way I can make
| small changes that don't break something else.
Exactly. And even if I implement the template system, I would always
work to preserve that aspect.
| It isn't that hard to modify a template that someone else
| wrote if it is well documented. I would like to see more
| of your <doc:template> elements inside the stylesheets
| explaining how things work. I would be willing to
| contribute to that effort. Think of your stylesheets as
| one of the biggest and most accessible XSL training grounds
| available. They exercise a lot of the XSL spec,
| and people learn quickly by example.
You're right. Thanks for the encouragement.
Be seeing you,
norm
--
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | certain: adj., insufficiently analyzed
http://nwalsh.com/ |