Re: DOCBOOK: Line breaks

[Norman Walsh <ndw at nwalsh dot com>]

/ "Beckers, Marc" <Marc.Beckers@softwareag.com> was heard to say:
| mark a line break within a paragraph. This has
| proved very convenient for passages like:
| 
| *****
| ...
| <p>The success of our ACE product is based
| on the following features:</p>
| <unorderedlist>
| <item>
| <p><em role="bold">Data Integration</em><newline/>
| Blah blah blah...</p>
| </item>
| <item>
| <p><em role="bold">High Performance</em><newline/>
| Blah blah blah...</p>
| </item>
| ....
| </unorderedlist>

Oh, barf. That's a variablelist and you know it :-)

<variablelist>
<varlistentry><term>Data Integration</term>
<listitem>
<para>Blah blah blah...</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>High Performance</term>
<listitem>
<para>Blah blah blah...</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>

| What is the best way of handling "newline"

variablelist?<duck/>

| in our transformation to DocBk (without
| customizing the DocBk DTD)? 
| Do Norm's DocBk2HTML stylesheets expect a particular
| processing instruction for a line break, and if so, what is it?
| If not, how do Norm's DocBk2HTML stylesheets treat unknown PIs?

DocBk2HTML's not mine, but I assume it's my DSSSL underneath :-)
In Jade (don't know about OpenJade), it's very hard to get at PIs.
You basically have to grovel through each byte of PCDATA by hand.
(Can you say "performance impact"? I knew you could...)
Unknown PIs are ignored. Heck, known PIs at unexpected places
are even ignored.

In XSL, this would be much easier...

| <aside>Er..uhmm..I am asking these questions in the assumption
| that a request for including something like "newline" 
| in DocBook would be a vain one - though "newline" is, 
| is it not, structural information?<duck/></aside>

No, it's purely presentational. What semantic meaning does it
have?  And how do you propose to implement your markup on a PDA
or speaking cell phone? At least with a variablelist, you can
identify the terms and imagine doing something else for limited
display environments.

                                        Cheers,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | I don't make predictions. I never
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | have and I never will.--Tony Blair
Member, DocBook Editorial Board    |