Re: DTD and stylesheets in Yelp

[Dan Mueth <muet alumni uchicago edu>]

On 5 Jun 2002, Gregory Leblanc wrote:

> On Wed, 2002-06-05 at 10:31, Alexander Kirillov wrote:
> > Hi guys:
> > from latest release announcements for Yelp it seems that Yelp now
> > includes DocBook DTD and Norm's modular stylesheets in the package. Is
> > that correct? Does this mean that docbook DTD and stylesheets are no
> 
> Yep, that's correct.  Well, at very least the stylesheets are included.
> 
> > longer dependencies? 
> 
> Yes, yelp should work without the system provided stylesheets.
> 
> > I am somewhat confused because I remember it being discussed on this
> > list some time ago, and at that time many people (e.g., DV) raised
> > serious objections to shipping our own copies of DTD and stylesheets, so
> > the consensus was that we should make it a dependency rather than ship
> > our own copy. Or did I miss something?
> 
> No, I don't think you missed anything.  However, the chances of
> distributions having a working XML catalog, the DocBook DTD, and the
> DocBook XSL stylesheets when GNOME 2 is released is non-existent.  Since
> we can't rely on distributions to get off their ass in time, and we NEED
> to ship GNOME with a working help system, we have to ship the DTD and
> stylesheets.  It sucks, but I don't see that we have any other option.

So what happens on systems which have decent DocBook packages which
install all the right files in the right places and register them?  I'm
assuming that Yelp is installing duplicate copies in a location which
doesn't over-write the others, to avoid package conflicts.  That seems
fine in itself, since I think we can do that without having packages
conflict or putting files in places where they shouldn't be.  What happens
to the XML catalog when we try to install and register two versions of the
same DTD?  Does everything (libxml's catalog and other tools, and Yelp)
continue to work properly with duplicate entries in the catalog?

Dan