DOCBOOK: Re: class extends superclass

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo at metalab dot unc dot edu>]

At 6:34 AM -0500 3/22/02, Norman Walsh wrote:


>No, that won't work because all the modifiers have to come first. What you
>want is:
>
>    <classsynopsis language="Java">
>      <ooclass>
>        <modifier>public</modifier>
>        <modifier>abstract</modifier>
>        <classname>SAXParserFactory</classname>
>      </ooclass>
>      <ooclass>
>        <classname>Object</classname>
>      </ooclass>
>    </classsynopsis>
>
>Not exactly intuitive, but it avoids having markup names like
>"extends" that are specific to a given programming language.
>

OK. That will work, and I can see how to extend it for interfaces 
too. Thanks! I still wonder if this shouldn't be an element of its 
own though. The notion of superclasses is pretty fundamental to 
object oriented languages. It could be written in a non language 
specific way like this:

   <classsynopsis language="Java">
      <ooclass>
        <modifier>public</modifier>
        <modifier>abstract</modifier>
        <classname>SAXParserFactory</classname>
        <superclass>Object</superclass>
      </ooclass>
    </classsynopsis>

The stylesheets could figure out whether to make that "extends 
Object" or "::Object" or something else.

Interfaces are trickier, mostly because they're really Java-specific, 
but I would like to have something like:

   <classsynopsis language="Java">
      <ooclass>
        <modifier>public</modifier>
        <modifier>abstract</modifier>
        <classname>SAXParserFactory</classname>
        <superclass>Object</superclass>
        <interface>Serializable</interface>
      </ooclass>
    </classsynopsis>

And why'll we're at it, it's mildly annoying that the paragraphs of 
my manuscript are littered with  <classname>String</classname>, 
<interfacename>ContentHandler</interfacename>, and 
<exceptionname>SAXException</exceptionname> but 
<literal>org.xml.sax</literal>. It's not a major problem, just a 
minor annoyance and inconsistency.

Right now I'm working on a Doclet that produces DocBook markup so a 
packagename element and possibly a whole packagesynopsis element 
would be convenient. But that's really Java-specific, so if you think 
it's out of scope, I wouldn't scream too loudly. Should I file RFEs 
on this stuff, or is this just getting too deep in the Java mire?
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|          The XML Bible, 2nd Edition (Hungry Minds, 2001)           |
|             http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/bible2/              |
|   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764547607/cafeaulaitA/   |
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