DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 18 November 2009
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The DocBook Technical Committee met on Wednesday, 18 November 2009 at
01:00p EDT (10:00a PDT, 17:00GMT, 18:00BST, 19:00CEST, 02:00JST+,
022:30p India+) for 60 minutes.
1. Roll call
Present: Patricia Gee, Paul Grosso, Dick Hamilton,
Scott Hudson, Gershon Joseph, Jirka Kosek, Larry Rowland,
Bob Stayton, Norm Walsh. We have a quorum.
Absent: Chris Chung, Jim Earley, Keith Falhgren, Nancy Harrison,
Corey Leong, Dave Pawson, John Pederson, Pine Zhang
2. Accepted the minutes [1] of the previous meeting.
3. Next meeting: 16 December 2009
4. Review of the agenda.
Add item 11a regarding DocBook website maintenance.
5. Review of open action items
a. Norm to put the new backwards compatibility policy in the spec.
COMPLETED.
b. Norm to put the new backwards compatibility policy in the
reference documentation.
COMPLETED.
c. Norm to take a look at the inlines and make a proposal
regarding RFE 2791288.
COMPLETED.
d. Norm to reply to RFE 2820947 (transclusion) with the
committee's concerns (see the minutes).
COMPLETED.
e. Gershon to develop a reltable example.
CONTINUED.
6. DocBook 5.0 standards celebration.
DocBook 5.0 was approved as an OASIS Standard. Congratulations
to all involved. [Pop goes the virtual champagne cork]
7. New edition of DocBook: The Definitive Guide
Dick reports that they are close to doing a technical review,
and he will solicit technical reviewers.
8. Publishing Subcommittee report.
Scott reports that they are still having problems deriving a
DTD from the RelaxNG for the publishing schema.
This technical glitch is holding up the process, and he
may have to resort to creating it by hand.
9. eLearning Subcommittee report.
Scott is organizing an initial meeting for 8 December at
10am EST. They will meet the 2nd Tuesday of each month.
10. DocBook assembly schema.
No further changes have been suggested. Members said they
would try out the prototype stylesheets that Bob provided
that convert between a DocBook document and an assembly
with topics.
ACTION: Larry will publish an updated schema with last month's
changes.
Norm suggested that we make available both full and simplified
versions. He is concerned that the details of the full
version will overwhelm those getting started who need
just basic assembly. It may be separate schemas, or
just documentation and examples.
ACTION: Norm to prepare a proposal for full and simplified
assembly versions.
Bob proposed adding a relatedlink element to DocBook 5. [2]
This could complement related links managed at the
assembly level. Members were generally favorable, but
no action was taken yet.
Bob suggested organizing a separate discussion of
linking in modular DocBook, and several members
expressed interest.
ACTION: Bob to organize a meeting to discuss linking
in modular DocBook.
11. topic element (RFE #2820190).
No further discussion at this time.
11a. DocBook websites.
We have received feedback on the docbook mailing lists
that the number and organization of DocBook websites is
a bit confusing.
ACTION: Norm to develop a proposal for maintaining
the DocBook websites.
12. Review of Requests for Enhancement
To browse a specific RFE, enter the URL (on one line):
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&
group_id=21935&atid=384107&aid=XXXX
RFEs to revisit for 6.0
1907003 biblioid content model too broad
RFEs to be considered
1679665 Add better support for modular documentation
This is covered under agenda item 10.
2770858 Add limited emphasis to ubiquitous inlines
2791288 add quote to corpauthor and gui elements
Norm looked at these two items together. He agrees that since
quote characters are permitted everywhere, the quote element
should also since it can generate quote characters suitable
to each locale. Norm suggested allowing the elements defined
in this DocBook RelaxNG pattern to appear almost everywhere:
db.publishing.inlines =
(db.abbrev
| db.acronym
| db.date
| db.emphasis
| db.footnote
| db.footnoteref
| db.foreignphrase
| db.phrase
| db.quote
| db.subscript
| db.superscript
| db.wordasword)
| db.glossary.inlines
| db.coref
He suggests using other alternate patterns as needed to prevent
nested use of inappropriate elements. There were no
objections.
ACTION: Norm to develop schema changes for discussion at
the next meeting.
2820190 add a topic element
Pending.
2820947 Ability to transclude text
At the August 2009 meeting [3], the committee suggested that
this feature be developed as an XML standard rather than a DocBook
feature. Members now don't feel this is likely to solve the
problems users have expressed. Members have suggested that
XInclude is not sufficient, conref is too complicated, but the
needs persist.
ACTION: Norm to develop a list of use cases and requirements
for transclusion.
ACTION: Bob to add agenda item for this RFE to next meeting.
2821653 indexterms in footnotes
Bob had reported that indexterms in footnotes work in XSLT.
We thought we approved allowing indexterms in footnotes at
the last meeting, but it was not recorded in the minutes,
so it is considered not approved yet. We will reconsider
at the next meeting. Paul suggested that this needs
better documentation.
ACTION: Norm to better document indexterm placement.
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[1] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200910/msg00022.html
[2] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200911/msg00003.html
[3] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200908/msg00004.html
Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
bobs@sagehill.net