xml-dev - Re: eBook Publishing DTD -- Preconceptual musings

[Sebastian Rahtz <sebastian.rahtz@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>]

Jon Noring writes:
 > Yes, the intent in my last post was NOT to discuss the fine intricacies of
 > TEI or DocBook or whatever, but to point out that philosophically they are
 > different in several basic ways.  

I am not sure you have proved that point, actually. To me, the
philosophical difference between TEI and Docbook is that the latter
provides a lot of detailed specialized tags for writing computer software
documentation. what else is different, conceptually?

 > What I intended to say is that the front, body and back matters usually each
 > have their own conventionally-used divisions.  In the front matter of most
 > books we may find the title page, table of contents, acknowledgements, etc.
 > In the body we may find chapters, sections, articles, etc.  In the back
 > matter we may find a glossary, index, colophon, etc.  There are a fairly
 > large number of oft-used "divisions" in book publishing practice.

ah, sorry, I see what you are getting at. you want to say
 <acknowledgements>
not
 <div type="acknowledgements">

I would probably agree, and would make an authoring DTD which included
<acknowledgements> in a <div>-level class, and write a transformation
which mapped it to canonical TEI before archiving

 > <letter>, <ack>, <foreword>, <appendix>, etc.  DocBook and ISO 12083 take
 > variants on this latter approach.

the danger is that if you have a set of 5 choices, you shoe-horn
unsuitable elements into them. "well, i know this looks like a
dedication but we only have <acknowledgements> so I will use that". the
TEI takes the cautious approach, which has equal dangers.

 > publishing DTDs, and he gave good reasons why a subset of DocBook would make
 > a good starting point.  
 > It would not surprise me if I will get one or two who
 > will put in a mildly good word for ISO 12083.  What's a proponent
 > to do?  :^)

it doesnt matter, if you are rigorous in your chosen DTD, as it can
alsmost certainly be transformed later

Sebastian


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