discuss: Re: [xml-dev] Templates in Writer
Subject:
Re: [xml-dev] Templates in Writer
From:
"Greg Ferguson" ####@####.####
Date:
25 Apr 2002 13:24:51 -0000
Message-Id: <10204250920.ZM7200@hoop.timonium.sgi.com>
On Apr 25, 12:04pm, ####@####.#### wrote:
> Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Templates in Writer
> > [...]
> > I looked at the dtd and ran screaming from it :-)
>
> You are not alone. ;=)
"DocBook: The Definitive Guide" is your friend. Makes navigating
the DTD painless: http://docbook.org/tdg/en/html/docbook.html
> > [...]
> > Is a <date> a date in ISO "YYYY-MM-DD" format?
>
> http://docbook.org/tdg/en/html/date.html
> # DocBook does not specify the format of the date.
Correct. No specification is made.
This is something the LDP has *recommended*, after much discussion.
Dates specified in ISO 8601 "complete date" format: YYYY-MM-DD
(http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime)
> > [...]
> > Is a <pubdate> a <date> that is in ISO "YYYY-MM-DD" format.
>
> Found no explicit statement.
> But in the exmaple at the end of
>
> http://docbook.org/tdg/en/html/article.html
>
> a <pubdate> is plain 4-digit year,
> and <date> is something strange.
Again, something the LDP recommends. This is actually
a hold-over from the linuxdoc DTD <date> element, in which
it was recommended to use "version, date":
v1.0, 2000-04-10
(I need to update the LDP Author Guide on this one.)
> > Are there other date formats?
>
> AFAIK DocBook does not cover formatting of dates,
> times or page numbers. Even the contents of <revnumber>
> is completely undefined. To me the name seems to mean
> a integer > 0. But the LDP-Author guide puts a version
> number there, e.g "1.0".
> (My contribution to obfuscation is to have fortunes as
> revision numbers, i.e. digit-free english sentence.)
Yes, I've seen many different date formats, although we have
*tried* to standardize on YYYY-MM-DD.
> > Where can I have a <date> or a <pubdate>?
<date> will generally occur within a <revision> (which
is an element of the container - <revhistory>):
http://docbook.org/tdg/en/html/revhistory.html
> > In an <articleinfo> or anywhere?
Most of the time, this information (<revhistory>, <pubdate>)
will occur within a document's <articleinfo> or <bookinfo>
area (http://docbook.org/tdg/en/html/articleinfo.html).
I stress these are guidelines that are not strictly enforced (we
do not reject on the basis of invalid <date> format, for example).
You'll run into different permutations.
regards,
--
Greg Ferguson * SGI principal engr / LDP contributor
SGI Tech Pubs * http://techpubs.sgi.com/ | gferg(at)sgi.com
Linux Doc Project* http://www.linuxdoc.org/ | gferg(at)metalab.unc.edu
