[xml2rfc] cross-referenceing sections in external docs ?

julian.reschke at gmx.de (Julian Reschke) Sat, 25 March 2006 03:13 UTC

From: "julian.reschke at gmx.de"
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 03:13:58 +0000
Subject: [xml2rfc] cross-referenceing sections in external docs ?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.50.0603241601050.9641-100000@tornado.he.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.50.0603241601050.9641-100000@tornado.he.net>
Message-ID: <4425259F.50701@gmx.de>
X-Date: Sat Mar 25 03:13:58 2006

George Jones wrote:
> Is there a way in xml2rfc to reference section numbers in other
> documents ?

No. (Not yet).

> Currently, I've got
> 
>   "<t>Limit Sources of Management (<xreftarget="I-D.foo" />, Section 2.8.2)</t>
> 
> I'd like not to have to manually update section numbers in
> cross-document references.

I do agree that having something like

	(<xref target="I-D.foo" section="2.8.2"/>)

would be useful in that more meta data would be available to the 
processor. For instance that could be used to generate precise section 
links in HTML output if the target document is known to be available in 
that format at a specific URL.

However that would leave the question how to format the reference? Would 
"[target], Section section" be always good enough? I'm not sure about 
that...

Finally, how would all of this help in updating references, except for 
the section numbers being easier to find programatically?

 > ...

Best regards, Julian
>From gmj at pobox.com  Sat Mar 25 09:47:42 2006
From: gmj at pobox.com (gmj@pobox.com)
Date: Sat Mar 25 06:47:56 2006
Subject: [xml2rfc] cross-referenceing sections in external docs ?
In-Reply-To: <4425259F.50701@gmx.de>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.50.0603241601050.9641-100000@tornado.he.net>
 <4425259F.50701@gmx.de>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0603250943100.17777@localhost.localdomain>

On Sat, 25 Mar 2006, Julian Reschke wrote:

> George Jones wrote:
>> Is there a way in xml2rfc to reference section numbers in other
>> documents ?
>
> No. (Not yet).
>
>> Currently, I've got
>>
>>   "<t>Limit Sources of Management (<xreftarget="I-D.foo" />, Section 
>> 2.8.2)</t>
>> 
>> I'd like not to have to manually update section numbers in
>> cross-document references.
>
> I do agree that having something like
>
> 	(<xref target="I-D.foo" section="2.8.2"/>)

If I have to name an explicit numeric section in the reference, then it
does me no good (for my use).    I guess what I'd like would be
something like:

> 	(<xref target="I-D.foo" section="baz"/>)

for example

> 	(<xref target="I-D.requirements-draft" section="specific-requirement"/>)

This would probably imply more data baeing added to the references files in bibtex
(e.g. all possible referanceable sectoins with corresponding section numbers)
or maybe having to have the XML of the document referred to.

Just some thoughts.  Now back to inserting section number references that will change
the next time the document  being referred to is revved.

Thanks,
---Goerge Jones