Re: [xml-dev] Profiling, diff and change tracking best practices?

[Robin LaFontaine <robin.lafontaine@deltaxml.com>]

Hi Lech,

You may like to take a look at this:
http://www.deltaxml.com/free/docbook/
which diffs docbook and in effect adds revision flags to the DocBook. 
This may help you a bit in your consideration of how to structure your 
schema.

Regards,
Robin

Lech Rzedzicki wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> I am at a fortunate stage where we are redesigning our XML schema so
> that it fits our requirements better.
> To give you an idea of the XML we're dealing with, it's loosely based
> on DocBook and used for multi-channel publishing.
> Some frequent scenarios include updating XML with new content,
> comparing versions, different languages, sending diffs to tranlation,
> but also producing slight variations depending on the output. Tracking
> changes (by being able to see what's been added and deleted) is also a
> nice to have feature.
> Basically what I aim to put in place is structures to help with these
> function that are not too verbose to overwhelm editors, yet powerful
> enough for 'future' scenarios.
>
> My initial thoughts are to employ xml:id attributes on block-level
> elements and add a set of attributes for each facet of profiling,
> possibly reusing DocBook attributes such as condition, version,
> audience, but my fear is that it won't powerful enough in the future.
>
> I would love to hear your general thoughts on best practices in this
> area of managing XML content and specifically on:
>
> 1. How low should we go with id's on elements? My main concern here is
> making diffs as easy as possible and possibly identifying chunks of
> xml that are as small as possible, making translation cheaper. On the
> other hand should I be bother at all about the performance, since all
> the documents are size-limited to a book size of ca 1000 pages(a few
> MB of XML)?
> 2. Use a possible verbose set of elements/attributes on the elements
> directly or use a meta-attribute that links to an attribute/element
> set in a secondary file? (less verbose but more complex)
> 3. Are 'add' and 'remove' sufficient change tracking marks to cover
> all scenarios? (I think any more complex edits such as update can be
> built up from those two)?
>
> I really hope I can get some good feedback from you and thanks in
> advance for that,
>
> Lech Rzedzicki
>
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-- 
-- -----------------------------------------------------------------
Robin La Fontaine, Director, DeltaXML Ltd 
DeltaXML: "Change control for XML"
Tel: +44 1684 592 144 Fax: +44 1684 594 504 
Email: robin.lafontaine@deltaxml.com      http://www.deltaxml.com
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