Outlining

[jjf]

I am new to xml/sgml and am envisioning many uses. One in particular
would be to use it for creating technical specs for our products. A
common method involves an outlined approach - be it with roman numerals
or other variations. How would I go about setting up my document such
that it could be parsed and viewed in an outline format?

 

[Andy Dingley]

I am new to xml/sgml and am envisioning many uses.

They've all been done already.

Go read up on DocBook

 

[jjf]

They've all been done already.

Go read up on DocBook

I have seached Oriely's DocBook manual and see nothing on outlining

A. Topic
a. sub topic
i. tertiary topic

What am I missing - is this called something else?

 

[Peter Flynn]

I am new to xml/sgml and am envisioning many uses. One in particular
would be to use it for creating technical specs for our products. A
common method involves an outlined approach - be it with roman numerals
or other variations. How would I go about setting up my document such
that it could be parsed and viewed in an outline format?

Do you really mean outlines, or do you just mean numbered sections and
subsections?

Outlining is a technique for setting up a collapsed preview of a document
structure, where the sections and lists are shortened to a few words
followed by ellipsis, so that the the sections you are not editing at the
time don't take up scroll space. This is an editor function, nothing to do
with XML. Many XML editors already implement it.

If you just mean numbered/lettered sections and subsections, then any decent
tech doc Schema or DTD will have robustly identified sections and
subsections which any decent editor or formatting system can autonumber
for you.

Which one did you mean?

///Peter