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Hi,

I have an element that I would like to add to the docbook DTD. This
element is a wrapper element that I would like to wrap all of the
standard docbook elements. This element is called "changebar". So
for example I would like changebar to appear like:

<changebar>
<chapter>
.........
</chapter>
</changebar>

<changebar>
<orderedlist>
.........
</orderedlist>
</changebar>

<changebar>
<para>
.........
</para>
</changebar>

Does anyone know how I can do that in the docbook DTD?

Thanks

STRONG suggestion that a much easier thing to do would be to add a
changed="yes" attribute to elements you want to mark this way. That can
be done without altering the DTD, since additional attributes are
treated as annotations and ignored by DTD validation. And in fact that's
the right approach in any case; change flags *ARE* annotations rather
than being part of the document's semantics, and really should be
handled as attributes rather than as element structure even if they were
going to become an official part of DocBook.

To make it really useful, I woudl suggest taking it a step further to
changeversion="3.2" or changedate="20070524" -- so a processor can
report what has changed since a particular point in time, or render
nested changebars (which is something IBM's SCRIPT/DCF system was able
to do, though it was working on SGML markup rather than XML).



--
Joe Kesselman / Beware the fury of a patient man. -- John Dryden

Thank you for your reply.

Our team had went over the idea of using a changebar attribute. But
the reason we decided to use an element is because we would like to
conditionalize the changebar according to the different countries our
manuals will be sent out to. So in the end it was decided a changebar
element with country attributes are the way to go. There are other
reasons as well and also it would be nice to know how to add elements
to every level of a document. Any suggestions?

Thanks

> conditionalize the changebar according to the different countries our
> manuals will be sent out to. So in the end it was decided a changebar
> element with country attributes are the way to go.

Could be done with a changebar attribute having country flags in its values.

> also it would be nice to know how to add elements
> to every level of a document.

Can't be done without major changes to the DTD unless the DTD already
provides a mechanism for it using Parameter Entities or something of
that sort. And even if the hooks are there, doing this risks losing the
ability to exchange these documents with other users/tools working in
Docbook unless they too are prepared to accept unexpected elements and
make some assumptions about exactly how to attempt to work past them.

Ignoring additional attributes really is a lot easier than ignoring
additional structure.

So my suggestion is "It's going to hurt when you do that." If you don't
like that suggestion, all I can suggest is digging into the DocBook DTDs
to see whether they do have the hooks for this, or if you're going to
have to patch them to death to make this work... and digging into all
your tools to see whether they'll support it or will blow up in your face.


--
Joe Kesselman / Beware the fury of a patient man. -- John Dryden

The other solution would be to create Processing Instructions for
start-change-bar and end-change-bar. (Or, for somewhat less chaos,
start-change-bar-on-next-element). Structurally ugly, but PIs are not
validated; they're directives/hints to specific applications and apps
which don't care about them are supposed to ignore them.

By the way, this question of "how do I extend a language" is precisely
why namespaces and schemas were introduced. If you're really going to
need this capability, I'd suggest dumping DTDs and moving over.

--
Joe Kesselman / Beware the fury of a patient man. -- John Dryden

In article <4655e8fa$1@kcnews01>,
Joseph Kesselman <keshlam-> wrote:
>STRONG suggestion that a much easier thing to do would be to add a
>changed="yes" attribute to elements you want to mark this way. That can
>be done without altering the DTD, since additional attributes are
>treated as annotations and ignored by DTD validation.

I'm baffled by this comment. All attributes must be declared for DTD
validity.

-- Richard
--
"Consideration shall be given to the need for as many as 32 characters
in some alphabets" - X3.4, 1963.

Thanks again for your replies. I know attributes and processing
instructions will make things easier. And switcing away from DTDs
would be great too, but we really can't do that with the system we are
using. We are so deep within it it would mean changing 200 manuals of
Docbook DTD related content.

Anyways, I know how to get it so that changbar elements can wrap a
para. These two lines of code will do it:

<!ENTITY % local.indexdivcomponent.mix "|changebar">
<!ENTITY % local.list.class "|changebar">

But in terms of wrapping chapters, sections, lists, etc, I am still
having no luck. Any further sugggestions?

Richard Tobin wrote:
> I'm baffled by this comment. All attributes must be declared for DTD
> validity.

Darn. You're right; I slipped a gear somehow. Either I was thinking of
one of the "lazy" partial evaluation modes some parsers offer, or I was
confusing it with something else...


--
() ASCII Ribbon Campaign | Joe Kesselman
/\ Stamp out HTML e-mail! | System architexture and kinetic poetry

wrote:
> Anyways, I know how to get it so that changbar elements can wrap a
> para. These two lines of code will do it:
>
> <!ENTITY % local.indexdivcomponent.mix "|changebar">
> <!ENTITY % local.list.class "|changebar">
>
> But in terms of wrapping chapters, sections, lists, etc, I am still
> having no luck. Any further sugggestions?

Unless there's a similar entity defining a list of children which you
can add changebar to, no suggestions. I'm afraid I'm not willing to
grovel through the DocBook DTD to try to resolve this for you, not on a
volunteer basis anyway.

Note too that unless changebar itself limits its contents, you risk
opening up the DTD much more than just adding the wrapper. Which is
another reason I think you're heading down a blind alley with this
solution. But de gustibus...

--
() ASCII Ribbon Campaign | Joe Kesselman
/\ Stamp out HTML e-mail! | System architexture and kinetic poetry

wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have an element that I would like to add to the docbook DTD. This
> element is a wrapper element that I would like to wrap all of the
> standard docbook elements. This element is called "changebar". So
> for example I would like changebar to appear like:
>
> <changebar>
> <chapter>
> .........
> </chapter>
> </changebar>
>
> <changebar>
> <orderedlist>
> .........
> </orderedlist>
> </changebar>
>
> <changebar>
> <para>
> .........
> </para>
> </changebar>
>
> Does anyone know how I can do that in the docbook DTD?
>
> Thanks
>

What would the content model of the changebar element look like? And
what would the content model of all other elements look like?

Introducing an element that can be used anywhere and contain anything
makes validation rather pointless. Much better to use attributes or PIs,
like others have suggested.

// Magnus