olink mechanism and database format incompatible with XSL 1.0 stylesheets

[frank-steimke]

We use the xslTNG Stylesheet for a set of books. I found the olink Mechanism for links between books, Although we have a long experience with DocBook, i have never used this mechanism before. This is what i found after some investigation:

• DocBook Definitive Guide explains the olinke Element and says the semantic is application specific;
• xslTNG Reference mentions olink only in Form of $olink-databases and says that each URI should contain an olink target database.
• The best (only?) explanation is in Bob Staytons XSL Guide, Chapter 24, Olinking between documents. Here i found a description of the target database format. A DTD for olink target databases is part of the XSL 1.0 Stylesheets (see common/targetdatabase.dtd
• The Oxygen Product does supports the olink mechanism. The Software expects olink target databases that are valid with respect to the DTD from the 1.0 Stylesheets.

So i tried to use the olink mechanism with the xslTNG Stlesheets, but it seems that the expected file format differs from the format that is described in the XSL 1.0 guide. For example, the 1.0 format expects targetset as a root element, while the xslTNG Stylesheets expects targetdb. I think there are more differences.

I don't know whether there is a formal definition of the target database file format from the DocBook TC, so i don't know whether one of the file formats is right and the other is wrong. It is, however, annoying when the mechanism that is supported by a popular Software for DocBook authoring (Oxygen) is not accepted by the xslTNG stylesheets and differs from the only explanation that can be found.

To conclude, my issue is: please add support for the olink mechanism with the olink target database format from the XSL 1.0 targetdatabase DTD.

Greetings, Frank