[publican-list] Machine-readable meta-data in docbook

[Joshua Wulf]

  On 08/25/2010 11:46 AM, Jeffrey Fearn wrote:
> Joshua Wulf wrote:
>>   Is there a good way to include machine readable meta-data in a 
>> docbook file for use with publican?
>>
>> I'm thinking things like Author, Created Date, Modified Date, 
>
> These examples exist in revhistory, which can be contained in the 
> various *info tags and at some other block levels. e.g chapterinfo, 
> sectioninfo, appendixinfo, para, etc.
>
> I'm pretty sure they don't get rendered if they are in these tags, but 
> if they are we could switch that off easily enough.
>
> You could have a single revision to track current status if you didn't 
> want the entire history.
>
>> Validated, QE Flag, etc...
>
> IMHO these are examples of information best kept in a work flow system 
> not in the XML. When I d/l and modify an XML it's no longer Validated 
> and the QE flag is incorrect. It's trivial to get out of sync and have 
> an incorrect perception of where you are at in the whole 
> write/review/publish process.
>
I agree. If we did this longer term we'd migrate the meta-data out to a 
dedicated container. Just looking for something to get a prototype up 
and running at this point.

> Even if you are going to keep it in the XML, since it's not being 
> displayed and only being accessed for machine processing you could 
> easily use existing attributes to cover this.
>
> e.g. you could add Verified or QE'd in to the revision remark.
>
> e.g. you could set the condition attribute in the revision to 
> condition="Verified".


>
>> Information that is useful to have, but should not be displayed in 
>> the document output.
>
>
>> I looked at including using RDFa to do it [1], but it looks like that 
>> relies on Docbook 5.
>
> AIUI RDFa won't work in DocBook 4, it injects attributes from foreign 
> name spaces in to existing tags, this requires support in the DTD to 
> be able to run validation.
>
> Also that article ends with "So I'm not sure." so you'd need to 
> confirm that it will actually be in DocBook 5.
>
>> Any suggestions for Docbook 4?
>
> Try the revhistory, it should cover your needs.
>
The root element of the docbook files I need to annotate are 
<variablelist>, <procedure>, <table> and possibly some other at a 
similar level. Anything down there that might be useable?

> Cheers, jeff.
>