[Clfs-dev] Simplification of the XML

[Joe Ciccone]

  On 05/28/2010 02:38 PM, Jean-Philippe MENGUAL wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm not a developper in the book and in the project, but I follow what
> happens with interest. Firstly because I write sometimes on the wiki,
> secondly because I translate into French the project.
>
> My opinion about the evolution of xml is the following (it's only mine).
> If I understand the advantages of such change, I wonder if it would not
> be a good idea, first and in priority, to release a new stable release.
> Indeed, there have not been any stable release for nearly 2 years I
> think. I think that priority should be this instead of xml issues. For
> instance, clfs could release a stable for x86_64 and multilib which seem
> to be worling; I don't know what is for sparc and other architectures.
>
> To sum up, I think it's a good idea, but it could be tried after
> releasing a new stable which seems to be now a bigger emergency (I think
> anyway).
>
> That's my opinion. I let you decide of course. Such is not a problem for
> me itself anyway.
I fully agree, I would like to see a release soon, there's a lot to do. 
Like William said, after making this change it would be much easier to 
maintain and prepare. That's why I am suggesting it now.

There's a lot that has to happen before a release, and there's a lot of 
instability in the development book right now. Plus is seriously lagging 
behind. It would probably be very counter productive to make a lot of 
major changes to the xml in its current state, and then simplify it.

My proposed change is simply an expansion on our current structure. Very 
little in the actual layout will change, mostly files will just be 
merged together rather then having way too many redundant xi:includes. 
Currently, for each forked file we have one for every tag for every 
architecture. It's ridiculous.

I will implement this in a few sections of the book and see how it works 
out.