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Re: [docbook-apps] looking for advice on how to support "exercises"... argh


On Fri, 16 May 2003, Joachim Ziegler wrote:

> hello,
> 
> i have nearly the same problem as you. i remember that we had some 
> discussion here some time ago about why there is no <exercise>-element 
> in DocBook.
> 
> what i need is a markup for exercises. exercises usually come in 
> an"exercise-section".
> 
> 
> in HTML and PDF output, every exercise should be numbered. the numbers 
> should simply increase from the beginning of the text to the end, no 
> matter where the corrsp. exercise  occurs.
> 
> so it should look like
> 
> 
> Exercises:
> 
>    17. Proof that P != NP.
> 
> 
>    18. Proof that 1+2+..+n = 1/2*n*(n-1)
> 
> 
> 
> does anybody know how to markup this and/or how to adapt the stylesheets 
> for exercises?

ah, this introduces another issue i never thought of -- that exercises
might be numbered continuously throughout a section/chapter/book.  i 
always start my exercise set over at 1 each time, but i can certainly
see the need for a continuous numbering option.

as it stands, i use an <orderedlist>, but that is a pretty weak
excuse for a set of exercises.  here's what would be nice for an
<exercises> element, even though some of it really falls into
stylesheet presentation:

1) the ability to number continuously within a certain division, 
   such as book, chapter, section, what have you.

   perhaps a "restart-after" attribute which takes as a value
   something like "chapter", "section" and so on.

2) the ability (and i know there will be howls of outrage over
   this one) to insert an arbitrary number of blank lines after
   an exercise or sub-exercise.  in many manuals, you may want
   to leave space to allow the reader to fill in the answer
   at that point.

   i realize this violates the spirit of docbook, but there
   should be *some* way to support this.

3) an <exercises> element should be a truly different kind of "list"
   and not just a special case of list, section or what have you,
   since it may be treated *very* differently from any of those

thoughts?

rday


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