Add topic element to DocBook?

On Friday 27 October 2006 22:40, Norman Walsh wrote:
> / doug <doug.duboulaygmail.com> was heard to
say:
> | the node useage. I guess there are semantic
distinctions between
> | the topics and the sections.
>
> The important semantic distinction, I think, between
sections and
> topics is that sections are (conceptually) sequential.
First you read
> section 1, then you read section 2, then you read
section 2.1, etc.
> Authors writing sections in this way can write with the
expectation
> that, when you're reading section 2.1, you've read all
of section 1
> and the introduction at the top of section 2. Phrases
like "as we saw
> in the preceding section" make perfect sense.
>
> Topics, on the other hand, are discrete units. They
stand alone.
> There's no expectation that there's any particular
topic "before" the
> one you're looking at or "after" it.
Typically there are hyperlinks
> of various sorts to help you navigate the topics in the
order that you
> need to read them. You can't refer to "the
previous topic" in any
> sensible way.

My bad. What I meant to say was that, for me, there were
semantic 
distinctions between the hierarchical nodes, which I thought
could 
be classed as <topic>s and the
discussion/description/use cases/typing 
information relevant to each of these nodes, which are
separate 
self-contained components of the <topic>. These
"sections" would 
never appear separately from their parent node/<topic>
so would 
never need to be reused in the "subtopic" sense.
But they are still quite 
legitimate partitions of information about a topic.


> |> Anyway, your example doc instance would not be
valid according to
> |> the proposed content model. By design.
> |
> | So close, and yet so far 


> If we allow topics and sections to mix together, then I
think we'll
> have a confused mess that's very difficult to explain
to users.
> Several people have expressed concerns along these
lines even in the
> case where there's a clear distinction.

Ok then, could the description partitions be
<simplesect>s 
(rather than <section>) to be followed by further
subtopics 
of the parent topic?  i.e. would you allow 
<simplesect> elements 
to partition information within a topic that itself, may or
may not 
have many subtopics? Or is it "topics" all the way
down?

For the record, the data structures in question are
scientific ontologies
such as this:
http://ugo.crl.nitech.ac.jp/~d
db/CIF/skunkworks.cgi/ddl2/symmetry/space_group.html
(produced from invalid DocBook source 

Thanks
Doug

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