Norm,
Here is what I think (being freshly returned from a week in the Rockies):
-----Original Message-----
From: Norman Walsh [mailto:ndw@nwalsh.com]
Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2010 10:36 PM
To: docbook-tc@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [docbook-tc] Assembly questions
Looking at 5.1b1,...
1. Why does the module have @renderas when it can contain an output that
also has @renderas?
LRR: The idea was that for very simple document structures it would not
be necessary to use an output statement when there is no need to
differentiate the render based on the output being used. At one
point it also provided a default renderas value when there are
multiple output formats that mostly use the same renderas but
there are a small set of exceptions -- we may have moved that
to a defaultrenderas attribute (it has been a while).
2. Renderas is an NMTOKEN. Shouldn't it be an xs:QName (maybe with a
special default rule that says that a name in no colon is by default
in the DocBook namespace)?
LRR: It was NMTOKEN because I was thinking of element names and other
token-like . If QNAME makes more sense, then by all means make it
that. I was thinking that it served the same function a token did,
and that's why I chose the NMTOKEN.
3. If module *should* have @renderas, then shouldn't structure as well?
LRR: At one time it did, and I would probably add it back. It likely
was dropped off when output was added to the markup and not added
back when it was added back to module.
4. What is @type on structure for?
LRR: Type identifies a class of document that has significance to the
rendering system: a helpsystem would have different rendering
expectations than a book and both would have different rendering
expectations than a tutorial. This is not as simple as the output
format -- I might want to render a helpsystem as CHM or as Webhelp
or as a printable version in PDF, but the fact that it is a
helpsystem provides information to the rendering systems for each
of the output formats that it might be rendering.
5. It seems inconsistent to me that you can say
...