But did anyone read this thread I've pointed out in a previous message?
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200409/msg00000.html
Do I see right that noone replied to Norman's questions? The main decision to introduce <refgroup> instead of giving new meaning to some of the docbook structures was to dramatically simplify the adoption of this technique in the stylesheets and livedocs. If we repurpose <section> as it was suggested in that thread, we would need to check for different uses of section. Now section is not a new file starting element, or at least not under a certain depth. Introducing a new tag was the simplest thing possible to do without modifying docbook semantics. Note that it would also allow us to use <section> wrapping later if desired, and if our rendering tools are ready for that.
Goba