discuss: Docbook questions
Subject:
Re: Docbook questions
From:
Saqib Ali ####@####.####
Date:
19 Nov 2003 16:24:30 -0000
Message-Id: <Pine.GSO.4.55.0311190753360.510@sjgcs1.stsj.seagate.com>
> argument far more appealing. Saqib, can you explain in simple terms what
> XPath/XQuery is and why it should be important to me? At this point, your
Rodolfo,
The main idea behind creating structured data is that should be easy to
access and query. One should be able to retrieve a subsection of any
structured data, by using simple traversal (XPath or XQuery).
XPath/XQuery are querying languages for XML just like SQL is a querying
for a Relational Database Management System
A well-defined, valid and well-structured documents make it easier for one
to write XPath/Query to retreive "specific" data from a document.
For e.g. you can use XPath to retrieve information in the <sect3/> block
with certain attributes.
However if you just used <section/> for all subsection, it becomes harder to retrieve the block of information that you need.
I would like to have all the HOWTOs stored in XML DB like Xindice, make it
available for querying using XPath, if anybody wants to. I know this is a
far-fetched idea, but if we start with documents that are well-structured
and well-formed, we are one step closer. I am storing documents in Xindice
on my Server @ http://www.xml-dev.com . If it works out nicely, I would
propose a similar solution to Linux document project.
However there are many HOWTO @ TLDP that are not well-formed or even
valid. We need to fix that first. So I wrote a online DocBook validator
that is available @ http://valdiate.sf.net . It is for new authors, who
don't want to go through the hassle of setting up
openjade/onsgmls/xsltproc etc.
Saqib Ali
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http://validate.sf.net <---- HTML/XHTML/DocBook Validator
