Hi Thomas,
I can report that 1-to-n links were not implemented in DocBook 5 in any
specific way. We basically provided two general mechanisms: xlink and
annotations, and left implementation up to the user.
In the few cases where I personally needed 1-to-n links, I used a
footnote containing multiple links, each with their own text so the
reader could decide which one to follow. That worked in both HTML and
PDF outputs without any customization.
I considered using extended xlinks, but the syntax is arcane and would
have required stylesheet customizations. Since I was handing that
documentation off to my client for them to maintain, I wanted to keep it
simple.
Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
[email protected]
On 11/25/2017 6:33 AM, Thomas Schraitle wrote:
Hi list,
as you already know, DocBook 5 allows extended XLinks[1] which you can do some
fancy things with it. ;)
As I was interested in the use case of creating 1:n link relationships (and
still be), I started a thread some years ago [2]. I got some very helpful
ideas and Bob wanted to bring this to the attention of Docbook's TC and "if
they have any thoughts on it".
Is there any progress on this topic?
Probably I missed some related discussion, but... is there already something
"official"? I haven't seen anything related in The Definitive Guide (TDG). But
I believe, it would be very helpful to have some guidelines how to do this,
documented in TDG.
Also in the light of assemblies, topics etc. this becomes more important to
have an official blessed method how to express it.
IMHO what I see from the outside, the following issues are needed to really
support extended XLinks:
1. Decide on a markup how to express 1:n relationships
I've found a post from Norman[3], this may be a good start (or my original
thread[2} from 2013).
2. Support extended XLinks in the stylesheets
3. Document it in DocBook's TDG
How difficult would it be? What are the pros and cons? Does it help to open an
issue in GitHub? What else is needed...?
What do you think? :)
-------- References
[1] http://tdg.docbook.org/tdg/5.2/extendedlink.html
[2] https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/201307/msg00015.html
[3] http://markmail.org/message/deiehzkvwmh6c2zp?q=xlink+list:org%2Eoasis-open
%2Elists%2Edocbook-tc
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
