My comments at the end to keep the flow:
Thanks.
-----Original Message-----
From: [mailto:] On Behalf Of Chris
Chiasson
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2006 9:13 AM
To: Rajal Shah
Cc: Johnson, Eric;
Subject: Re: [docbook] Add topic element to DocBook?
On 10/27/06, Rajal Shah <> wrote:
> It greatly facilitates modular writing, where we're not just
focused on
> books but individual units of information.. The style of writing
in the book
> changes from being a single flow from beginning-to-end to instead
be a
> collection of topics.. This allows organizations (I work at
Juniper), to
> provide their content in book form as well as searchable topics on
the web
> or for re-use of content elsewhere.
Part of the problem seems to be that we are trying to make something
that is a ground-up phenomenon - modular writing via <topic> -
fit
into a bottom-down hierarchy.
>>>>
Rajal ->
Very true! I've struggled with that
dichotomoy too.. I've often wondered if we should have a DocTopic v/s a DocBook
mechanism! J
Seriously though, I think DITA is taking a
grounds-up approach; and DocBook’s value-add would be to support topics
in the bottom-down hierarchy.. Cause, in the real world, people want to do
books or already have books and want to reuse existing content in the form of
topics too..
I believe, that the books will never go
away and thus support of topics inside a DocBook bottom-down hierarchy would be
the eventual winner over something like DITA. (We need something like maps too,
though)..
Regards.
--
Rajal
