Re: DOCBOOK: sect1 in preface

[Jorge Godoy <godoy at conectiva dot com dot br>]

On Wed, Feb 09, 2000 at 03:48:55PM -0500, Norman Walsh wrote:
> / Jorge Godoy <godoy@conectiva.com.br> was heard to say:
> | On Wed, Feb 09, 2000 at 11:50:32AM -0500, Norman Walsh wrote:
> | > Put the object inside a formal wrapper (figure, for example) and
> | > xref to that. Xref has to generate text, so you have (basically)
> | > to point to something with a title.
> | 
> | And can't a <informalfigure> be used instead of <figure>? I don't want
> | to supply a title for every figure I use an <xref> to. 
> 
> Naturally, if you tweak your stylesheet, you can do anything you
> can implement :-). But the out-of-the-box behavior of my DSSSL
> and XSL stylesheets is that they number formal objects (things
> with titles) but do not number (or otherwise label) informal
> objects (or graphics/mediaobjects that occur directly in the
> flow).

I want to use the little modifications to your styles I can. I'm
already tweaking the system for our presentation standards and I don't
want to add or remove features to already existing elements. The idea
is having them as portable as possible. No modification would be the
best solution. It's becoming possible until now (I'm modifying the
stylesheets only for having the right appearance of the document).  

> Given that an informalfigure is not labelled, what cross
> reference text could the stylesheets possibly produce? Sure, if
> informalfigures were automatically numbered, it could output
> "See Informalfigure 3-5" or something, but they aren't. So you
> can't use xref.
> 
> So I have two questions:
> 
> 1. Does that make the problem clear?

Yes, it does.
I asked because on "The Definitive Guide" the description for
informalfigure say: "A untitled figure" (I'm not a native speaker, but
shouldn't it be "An untitled figure"?). For informal elements, there
should be also the information that they are unnumbered. 
Isn't it possible to include another information telling if you can or
cannot make cross references to each element? It would improve the
book. 

> 2. What semantic do you _wish_ were implemented? :-)

I'll use the link option you gave before but, a good implementation
would be making the title element of figure (not informalfigure!)
optional. If there's no title, there'll be only the figure number and
then I can make a xref to it. I think that this is the best
option. The same would be very interesting to example. We don't always
want to supply a title for the example but we might wanto to make a
xref to it... 

Thanks,
--
Godoy.	<godoy@conectiva.com.br>               GPG Fingerprint
                                         851B B620 626D 2AD0 E783
"Ser poeta não é minha ambição,          E932 1330 BE6D A4A3 0625 
 é minha maneira de estar sozinho"
              - Fernando Pessoa.       Publicações @ Conectiva S.A. 

Except where explicitly stated I speak on my own behalf.
Exceto onde explicitado as declarações aqui feitas são apenas minhas.