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Re: [docbook-apps] looking for advice on how to support "exercises"... argh
- From: "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday at mindspring dot com>
- To: Joachim Ziegler <ziegler at mpi-sb dot mpg dot de>
- Cc: docbook apps list <docbook-apps at lists dot oasis-open dot org>
- Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 14:37:51 -0400 (EDT)
- Subject: 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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