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Re: Documenting the DTD


I think the reference was to architectural processing that allowed a 
separate DTD to be processed by an appropriate DSSSL processor (such as 
JADE) as a DSSSL script, or as a separate document describing the code.

Norm actually set up the DTD to do this, and it is in the DocBook DSSSL 
script distribution, as dbdsssl.dtd.  It took me some fooling around to get 
it to work (it doesn't seem to have been updated for DocBook 4.1), but I 
did succeed.

The gist of this approach is to write the DSSSL script as a document 
intended for a human reader, which can be incidentally read by the 
computer.  This contrasts with the usual approach, which treats it the 
script -- or code in general -- as a document primarily intended for the 
computer, which is incidentally read by humans.  This approach is sometimes 
called "literate programming", and there is a fair amount of literature on 
the subject.  There are also a variety of tools that can be used to 
facilitate this basic approach that do not depend on DocBook or DSSSL.

I would guess that dbdsssl.dtd, as a DocBook application, is relevant to 
this list.  If you'd like to discuss the subject more generally, email me 
privately.

Mark

At 10:09 AM 2/5/01 -0800, Gregory Leblanc wrote:
>I'm sorry that this is stretching off topic for the DocBook list, but I
>know that I've seen possible answers and suggestions here. I remember
>Norm saying something about making the DocBook DTD "self documenting".
>I'm assuming this is done by putting things into the DTD that can be
>extracted using some too, generating something akin to the reference
>section of DocBook: The Definitive Guide.  Does anybody have some more
>details on this?  Thanks,
>
>     Greg


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