Re: DAVENPORT: Navigation footers and HTML 4

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

/ kent@darwin.eeb.uconn.edu was heard to say:
| I am trying to make the DSSSL output from DocBook v3.1 comply with
| HTML 4.0 Transitional. Since I'm not doing anything complicated, just
| making that declaration is getting me there -- almost. The only thing

Be aware that there's a nasty problem lurking here. You can't
put block things (like UL's) in paras in HTML 4.0, but you can
in DocBook.  So if you say

<para>...<itemizedlist>...</itemizedlist>...</para>

You'll get

<p>...<ul>...</ul>...</p>

in the HTML output. Which isn't valid HTML 4.0. I really don't
know what to do about this. (One possibility which has sorely
tempted me on more than one occasion is to output empty <p>'s
for <para> and let tag minimization fill in the details.)

| lacking (for now, at least) is the summary attribute of the table
| element used for navigation. Is there an easy way to get one added
| (summary="" or summary="navigation" would be fine)? I couldn't find
| any variables to set, and it looked to me as if I might need to
| rewrite part of the output routine. I was hoping to avoid that, if
| possible.

Nope, I'm afraid you'll have to hack the footer navigation code.
Just cut-and-paste the definition of default-footer-nav-tbl into your
custom stylesheet and add the desired attribute.

                                        Cheers,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | We dance around in a ring and
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | suppose, but the Secret sits in
Member, DocBook Editorial Board    | the middle and knows.--Robert Frost