[docbook-apps] Re: <literallayout> rendered with lots of internal whitespace

[Norman Walsh <ndw at nwalsh dot com>]

/ Bob Stayton <bobs@sco.com> was heard to say:
| On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 10:01:06AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
|> 
|>   (i'm on a roll this morning, and that's just based on decaf.  most
|> of these observations are based on a document that i'm throwing
|> together that demonstrate how to use a sizable number of docbook
|> elements by showing samples of their use.  so i'm getting to see
|> little glitches in the PDF generation i might not have noticed
|> before.  the toolchain is xsltproc + FOP.)
|> 
|>   the latest weirdness is the rendering of a simple 
|> 
|> <literallayout>
|>  Now is the time
|>    for all good men
|>  to come to the aid
|>    of their party.
|> </literallayout>
|> 
|>   an absolutely stock, non-customized PDF rendering appears as:
|> 
|>            Now          is         the         time
|>             for       all        good           men
|>         to       come      to         the       aid
|>                of             their           party.
|> 
|> in other words, all sorts of inserted whitespace, and left-justified
|> for no reason that i know of.
|> 
|>   OTOH, if i change this ever so slightly to
|> 
|> <literallayout class="monospaced">...
|> 
|> it's perfect -- courier font, proper indentation:
|> 
|>  Now is the time
|>    for all good men
|>  to come to the aid
|>    of their party.
|> 
|> 
|> any reason why a generic literallayout would generate the first
|> example above?  the example shown in the online docbook TDG is
|> wrapped inside a <blockquote>, but a <para> is apparently a legal
|> parent as well, which is what i'm using.
|
| I think this may be a bug in the attribute-set definitions.
| The 'verbatim.properties' attribute set does not set
| text-align="start", so FOP reverts to the inherited 
| text-align="justify".  The 'monospace.verbatim.properties'
| attribute-set uses 'verbatim.properties' and adds
| text-align="start".
|
| This seems to have been done intentionally, but I'm not
| sure why.  I think all of the whitespace preserving
| properties should be in these attribute-sets.
| These would include:
|
| text-align='start'
| wrap-option='no-wrap'
| white-space-collapse='false'
| linefeed-treatment="preserve"
|
| I'll ask Norm about it.

The problem with setting text-align is addresses. Specifically,
addresses on title pages that are centered. That's why it's inherited.

But I'm not sure that's really a good reason. Maybe we should tackle
that problem directly and let verbatims all get proper, explicit
alignments.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | A censor is a man who knows more
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | than he thinks you ought
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | to.--Granville Hacks

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