DOCBOOK: Re: Adding metainfo to more places

/ Peter Eisentraut <> was heard to say:
| Norman Walsh writes:
|
|> The DocBook TC has had several discussions about additional places in
|> DocBook where it would be beneficial to allow metainfo. Our current
|> candidate list of places is:
|>
|>   equation, example, figure, informalequation, informalexample,
|>   informalfigure, informaltable, itemizedlist, legalnoticeinfo, msgset,
|>   orderedlist, procedure, qandadiv, qandaentry, qandaset, table,
|>   variablelist
|
| I tend to think that every block-level element could have meta info.  For
| instance, even footnotes and paras could have separate authors or legal
| status.  It's unlikely to be used often, but not more unlikely than, say,
| a procedure with its own metainfo.  And if you allow meta info in every
| block element it would also make the whole thing more consistent and
| easier to learn and use.

Adding info to every block element, would have two drawbacks:

- It'd make all the content models that much larger which would complicate
  processing expectations

- In mixed content elements, it would not be possible to say something
  like this:

  <!ELEMENT para (docinfo?,(#PCDATA|emphasis|...)*)>

  you'd have to allow docinfo anywhere inside the paragraph:

  <para>Hi there<docinfo><title>Some Title</title></docinfo>. Isn't this
  a strange<docinfo><isbn>34234342</isbn></docinfo> paragraph?</para>

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <>      | Decide, v.i. To succumb to the
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | preponderance of one set of
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | influences over another
                                   | set.--Ambrose Bierce