I have played with this before and as far as i remember the problem is that only a certain order of <section> and <refentry> tags is allowed within <chapter> by the DocBook DTD
AFAIR DSSSL is not too picky when it comes to DTD issues like this while XSLT and "make test" will complain heavily
Anyway, i have considered this approach as a failed experiment in the past ...
So, do we modifiy the DTD and leave docbook ?
I think we should not do that, if the jade people suggest something else, which might work too.
It is always a question of what the rendering becomes, and how much does it need to be modified (XSLT, DSSSL, Livedocs). Using sections as suggested in the thread pointed out by Nuno might lead to unexpected results. Have someone tried that out actually in a small test phpdoc document?
Goba