Title: DocBook Customization
Hi Eric,
My impression is that many groups adopt DITA
because they want to work in topics rather than chapters. Then they do whatever
is needed to use DITA to write topics. I have been in
contact with more than one group that has adopted DITA without any DTD
customization. As you say, people often do crazy things.
8^)
One common DocBook customization practice is to cut
down on the number of elements. There are several reasons why:
a. When using an XML editor that presents a
list of valid tag names, the list can be quite long in many contexts (such as
inlines). Many such elements are never to be used, so remove them from
sight.
b. Reducing ambiguity in choosing among
similar elements.
c. Reducing the complexity of a stylesheet
customization. If you know you are only supporting certain elements you don't
need to have templates for all elements.
d. Reduce the complexity of the para element
by removing block element children (making it like simpara).
It is possible to make a subset that still produces
documents that validate with the full DocBook schema. But of course not the
other way around.
In terms of the cost of customization, I have found
customizing the DocBook 4 DTD to be easier than customizing the DITA DTDs. In
DITA's DTDs, everything is a twice-removed parameter entity, and it is hard to
keep track of where an element is actually declared and what children it can
contain. DocBook 4 uses parameter entities, but not to such a complex
degree. DocBook 5's RelaxNG grammar is even easier to customize, once you
learn the grammar.
Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
----- Original Message -----
From:
Eric
Johnson
To: DocBook Apps ML
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 5:11 AM
Subject: [docbook-apps] DocBook
Customization
I was talking to someone last night and they
mentioned that the biggest use case, and the one that is causing everyone to
flock to DITA, for using DocBook is to take the schema and then customize
it.
My first reaction was to think "That's completely
crazy. This person is obviously just a DITA cultist and seeing the world
through tinted lenses." Then the cynic in me piped up and said "People often
do crazy things."
Is this a big use case in the DocBook world? Do
organizations start with standard DocBook and then tweak it around to make
some customized version of the schema that is no longer DocBook?
Why would an organization customize DocBook instead
of adopting DITA which is built with the (almost) requirement that it be
customized?
What is the cost of doing the customization?
One of the reasons my group adopted DocBook was
that the schema did not need to be customized. We had to create a few
guidelines around using certain tags, but that was much easier than modifying
the schema. Perhaps in larger groups using the schema to enforce rules is more
desirable.
