<section> vs <sect1>, ... [was: Re: usb-keys]

[Paul W. Frields]

Let me restate a couple things, I was in a hurry to leave work...

On Mon, 2004-08-16 at 16:10, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> Moment of clarity needed. I went back and re-read this thread because I
> couldn't remember what was being argued here. Let me see if I can
> summarize this right.
> 
> Originally the topic was whether to use <sectN> vs. <section>. Everybody
> agrees that's easy to change in existing documents. It looks to me, a
> relatively non-stupid individual (relative to whom? *shrugs*), that e.g.
> promoting <sect2> to <sect1> is:
> 
> - considerably more difficult if all the "id" attributes include
> "s2-..." due to <xref>s and such.
> - not much more difficult if the "id" attributes don't include "s2-..."

And if we use <section id="sn-something"> then it's somewhere in the
middle, maybe closer to the latter, since the <section> might someday
want to be a <chapter>, right?

> However, since "id" tags are used in the current XSLT's to set filenames
> for HTML transforms, include graphics, and so forth, they do have some
> use if we keep the current XSLT's.

That should be "'id' attributes," of course, sorry. And, some would
argue, they're less useful if we saddle them with information about the
tag they're attributing, like <section id="sn-configuring-foobar">,
since if the <section> becomes a <chapter> you have to go around
changing all the instances. Not much more than irksome, but maybe
unnecessary.

> I assume that if we change to using <section id="configuring-foobar">
> instead of <sect1 id="s1-configuring-foobar">, the XSLT can be set to
> recognize the section as a new HTML chunk file only if <section> is at
> level 1, right? If that's the case, I have yet to see a convincing
> argument why we shouldn't use <section id="configuring-foobar">. 

That should read better this way:
   I assume that if we change to using <section id="configuring-foobar">
instead of <sect1 id="s1-configuring-foobar">, the XSLT can be set to
*only* recognize a level 1 section as the place to break a new HTML
chunk file, right?....

> I still think having an id for every element currently listed in the
> naming conventions is a good idea. I see a good bit of value in:
>      grep "id=" doc-source.xml
> Not quite as much as "grep 'section'", but quite a bit.

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE