Nicolas,
You state the case very well. I have also longed for
a simple, modern, elegant XHTML output from DocBook source. This goal was
elusive when designing Iona's DocBook-sourced XHTML books, and we fell far short
of the clean output over in the Linux from Scratch project.
It is sometimes disappointing to have set up a modern
document building process, where books can be generated with the flick of the
wrist -- only to see the output littered with dozens of empty div's and
table-based layout. DocBook-generated HTML is easy to spot in view-source mode
because of these features, and DocBook-generated XHTML rarely passes standard
validation tests. Sometimes it looks like a great leap forward into the 1990's.
But even so, DocBook is the only game in town. And you
don't have to buy an entire ecosystem like with most adventures in the DITA
world. Perhaps over time, we can slowly steer the great DocBook tanker into the
safe harbor of validated XHTML output.
<snip>
My goal is
not only accessibility (I think these results are tolerably well accessible).
What should be a common goal is to get a semantically correct, and
elegant, output.
For example, tables should be used only to present
tabular data and not for the layout (but it seems everybody agrees with
that).
Definition lists should be used to present... lists of
definitions.
Here is an
equivalence:
DocBook
<glossdiv>
<glossentry>
<glossterm>
Definition term 1
</glossterm>
<glossdef>
Definition data
1
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<glossentry>
<glossterm>
Definition term 2
</glossterm>
<glossdef>
Definition data
2
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
</glossdiv>
could be transformed
to:
XHTML
<dl
class="glossary">
<dt
id="term01">
Definition term 1
</dt>
<dd>
Definition data 1
</dd>
<dt
id="term02">
Definition term 2
</dt>
<dd>
Definition
data 2
</dd>
</dl>
DocBook
<qandaset>
<qandaentry>
<question>
FAQ question 1
</question>
<answer>
FAQ answer
1
</answer>
</qandaentry>
<qandaentry>
<question>
FAQ question
2
</question>
<answer>
FAQ answer
2
</answer>
</qandaentry>
</qandaset>
could
be transformed to:
XHTML
<ol
class="qandaset">
<li
id="qandaentry01">
<p
class="question">
FAQ question
1
</p>
<p class="answer">
FAQ answer
1
</p>
</li>
<li
id="qandaentry02">
<p
class="question">
FAQ question
2
</p>
<p class="answer">
FAQ answer
2
</p>
</li>
</ol>
As you can see, there is no more
need for tables, as well as hard-coded sections numbers, since they are
automatically generated by the browser (and it is possible to use a <ul>
instead if we don't want automatic numbering).
Of course,
DocBook is much more detailed, but it is considerably easier to strip some
details than the reverse. Both DocBook and XHTML are XML flavors and they share
many semantical structures, so it should be fairly easy to better preserve these
structures. What are markups in DocBook can be transformed as attributes in
XHTML to preserve the semantical meaning and give the required hooks for CSS
presentation. In fact, it is much easier than transforming to "old-fashioned"
HTML with tables layout.
I'll have a look at the LFS XHTML XSLT (proposed
by M. Canales), and see if they comply with such a state of
mind.
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