Re: Accommodating articles.

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

/ Doug du Boulay <ddb@owari.msl.titech.ac.jp> was heard to say:
| I've been looking into using DocBook <article>s as a possible vehicle for
| journal manuscripts. For the most part I think it has the
| potential to be a good fit, but there are just a few issues which are 
| troublesome. 
|
| (1) There seems to be no <articleinfo> container to hold the name of 
|     the journal in which the article has been or will be published. 
|     This seemed an unusual oversight because <volume> <pages> <issue>
|     <date> already exist.
|     I guess it would be called <publication>. Ideally the  
|     content model would contain a title or more often an 
|     abbreviated title of the journal, Maybe both?

This looks like an RFE.

| (2) It would be useful to have a formal <contact> element within    
|     <authorgroup>, typically, but not always one of the authors 
|     of the article. It would therefore need the same content 
|     as <author>, but probably wouldn't be displayed by default.

Perhaps use role on one of the authors?

| (3) <authorgroup><author> needs to allow <footnote>
|     The reason is that sometimes authors move on, to the afterlife or 
|     new laboratories/positions and it is important and respectful 
|     to note such things, but not within the main body of the article.
|     Actually I noticed some publications put the complete author 
|     address as a footnote, appropriately <footnoteref>'ed by other 
|     authors from the same institution.

Another RFE, please.

| (4) It would be nice if there was some kind of generic inline <name> 
|     container for denoting the names of books or journals or companies 

That's citetitle

| (5) It might be nice if the <equation>, <inlineequation> and 
|     <informalequation> elements provided an @type attribute to 
|     distinguish between mathematical and chemical equations/reactions 
|     and formulae. Perhaps "math"|"chem"|"nuclear?" with a default of "math"?

Can you use role for this? Chemistry and nuclear physics aren't
directly in DocBook's scope.

|     (actually, it would be very nice to be able to put text - punctuation
|     such as a full-stop or comma at the very least - on the same line 
|     as an <equation> or <informalequation> )

That seems problematic at best. However, I expect these elements are
allowed inside para, so you could do it, but you'll have to get the
processing system to "do the right thing".

| (6) The <supplement> thing for centralising embedded related data in 
|     other XML dialects. 
|  (see http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200507/msg00053.html)

I'm really not sure what you have in mind there, but I'll follow-up to
that message...

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | Everyone has talent. What is rare
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | is the courage to follow the
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | talent to the dark place where it
                                   | leads.--Erica Jong

PGP signature