Hi,
I think perhaps it was premature of me to notify
the list about the modular DocBook work before it was ready to be
released. I'm afraid people are getting the wrong impression due to the
lack of information. My brief summary did not do justice to the actual
work. In fact, an assembly will accept chapters and sections as well as
topics. You don't have to use topics at all, but they are a useful
semantic if you are creating such modular content from scratch.
I understand that Norm will soon be releasing the
actual beta schemas, and I think those will answer many of the questions my
posting raised.