[publican-list] Publican 3.0 -- with DocBook 5 or without?

[Jeff Fearn]

On 06/28/2011 11:31 PM, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Tue, 28 Jun 2011, Ruediger Landmann wrote:
>> However, we also face a major design decision. Publican was designed
>> to support DocBook 4; now that DocBook 5 is out, do we want to move
>> Publican to use that instead?
>
> I think we should follow at some point, it's all a question of timing.
>
> Last time I checked, there were very few good free software dealing
> with Relax NG / Synchrotron (except some java implementation). Have
> libxml2 and the associated tools caught up already?

We'd use XML::LibXML::RelaxNG for this, which is built on libxml2.

FYI there is test code in head that, if you set dtdver in your 
publican.cfg to 5.1b2, or similar, will use the RelaxNG validation.

It was part of the "is this reasonably possible" testing.

> In any case, I would suggest to make a last release based on docbook
> 4 and to keep around (an unofficial) branch for it, because some people
> will take a lot of time to switch and it's always good to be able to
> accept patches if some external contributors are providing them for their
> own needs...

I'm happy to carry a branch for 2.5, but the current head has diverged 
from 2.5 to the degree that releasing it will delay DB5 support until 
2012. Which is fine by me, I just don't want people badgering me for 
DB5x support when I'm too busy to do it and support a very much changed 
DB4 version.

> $0.02 from the Debian package maintainer

Sweet!

Cheers, Jeff.