DocBook v5.1 Assembly Map Manager

[shudson310]

Now that DocBook v5.1 is available for public review, I'd like to see an implementation of a DocBook Assembly Manager, similar to the DITA Maps Manager capability.

For your convenience, OASIS provides a complete package of the prose document and related files in a ZIP distribution file. You can download the ZIP file here:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/docb ... sprd01.zip

[sorin_ristache]

We will consider supporting DocBook assemblies in a future version of Oxygen, now that a stable version of the DocBook 5.1 schema is available. Do you know what advantages a DocBook assembly would have over a DITA map?

A related concern is that the most recent processing available for assemblies comes with DocBook XSL 1.78.1 which is already two years old (March 2013). I am not sure how well the current stable version of the DocBook 5.1 schema is supported in Docbook XSL with a two-year gap between the two, we will have to do some tests.

[shudson310]

Hi Sorin,

There are several differences between DocBook Assembly vs DITA Map. There is some additional explanation here: http://docbook.org/tdg51/en/html/ch06.html

An assembly has four major parts:

• resources - essentially, a manifest.
• structure - strong correlation with DITA Map or Bookmap. It specifies the sequencing of resources
• relationships - similar to a reltable, but more like RDF triples or XTM (topic map), where you define the relationship (rel), association (arc or property), and instance (resource).
• transforms - identity transforms for resources. This would be similar to the oXygen transformation scenario definitions, but describes how a particular resource should be transformed. It also can contain a "renderas" attribute to be applied to the result of the last transformation.

Regarding the stylesheet support, not much has actually changed with the assembly part of the specification. Most of the delay is due to other schema bug fixes, or OASIS review process. It should be pretty stable, but testing to find any gaps is also a good idea.