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

[Jeffrey Fearn]

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.

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.

Cheers, jeff.

-- 
Jeff Fearn <jfearn at redhat.com>
Software Engineer
Engineering Operations
Red Hat, Inc
Freedom ... courage ... Commitment ... ACCOUNTABILITY