DOCBOOK-APPS: Re: conditionalization of XML

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

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Some more thoughts about this issue...

1. Entities should be expanded. If users process

   <!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "..." "..." [
   <!ENTITY chap1.xml SYSTEM "chap1.xml">
   ]>
   <book>
     ...
     &chap1;
   </book>

   They're going to expect the profiling to apply to the content of
   &chap1;, not just the wrapper script. That means this code needs to be
   implemented as an XML process, not a character-stream process. And really,
   I think it needs to be done at the parser level, not in something like flex.
   Though I suppose you could implement a specialty XML parser with flex.

2. The downside of expanding entities is that &nbsp; is going to become &#160;.
   Is this really a problem? You're not going to edit the profiled content,
   right?

3. OTOH, I really do want this to happen before validation. That way I can write

   <chapter>
     <title condition="print">Print Title</title>
     <title condition="online">Online Title</title>

   and have the right thing happen.

4. That means that losing the <!DOCTYPE declaration is unfortunate.
   But that could be fixed, I think, with a specialty XML parser.

5. You know, I really want this at the URI level.

   <!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "..." "...">
   <book>
     ...
     <xi:include href="http://localhost/profile/path/to/document.xml?condition='html'"/>
   </book>

Now we're getting somewhere!

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

- -- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | A life, admirable at first sight,
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | may have cost so much in imposed
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | liabilities, chores and
                                   | self-abasement, that, brilliant
                                   | though it appears, it cannot be
                                   | considered other than a failure.
                                   | Another, which seems to have
                                   | misfired, is in reality a
                                   | triumphant success, because it has
                                   | cost so little.--Henry De
                                   | Montherlant
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