Re: DOCBOOK: RFE 136: co in userinput

[Nik Clayton <nik at nothing-going-on dot demon dot co dot uk>]

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On Wednesday 13 June 2001  6:16 pm, Norman Walsh wrote:
> We've been discussing this issue for a while. I took the action
> item[1] to form a concrete proposal.
>
> To recap, consider this example:
>
> <screen><prompt>#</prompt> <userinput>foo <co id="foo"> \
> bar <co id="bar"> \
> baz <co id="baz"></userinput>
> </screen>

That looks familiar :-)

> As it stands, this isn't valid because you can't put a co inside
> userinput.
>
> What we'd really like is <co> as an inclusion on <screen> but we can't
> have that.

Why not?

Ah, I've just seen why.  Because there's a ScreenCO element as well.  Why 
are there two separate elements?

> In order to fix this in XML, we're going to have to add co to the
> content model of some elements. As a consequence, the DTD will not be
> able to distinguish co in userinput in screen from co in userinput in
> para.

Why is that an issue?

> I suggest:
>
> 2. We add co to the content model of prompt, userinput, computeroutput,
>    replaceable, and systemitem. (And nothing else.)
>
> Comments?

This would add extra markup requirements.

Currently, my DocBook DTD extension has this in it:

    <!ENTITY % local.cptr.char.mix "|CO">

which lets me put co inside screen.

If you tighten it up, it means that markup like this:

    <screen><prompt>%</prompt> <userinput>ls -l</userinput>
    <co id="attr">-rw-r--r--  1 <co id="user">nik  <co id="group">nik    
3593 Jun 13 13:11 <co id="filename">catalog 
    -rw-r--r--  1 nik  nik   18838 Jun  9 14:47 freebsd.dsl 
    -rw-r--r--  1 nik  nik    4233 Jan  6 18:26 freebsd.dtd</screen>

will need an inner <computeroutput> to be valid (or, alternatively, to be 
wrapped in <screenco>).

That's (potentially) a *lot* of documents that will require revision.  The 
existing documentation for <screen> does not make it clear that 
<computeroutput> is required.

If you did something like this, it would probably then make sense to 
tighten up <screen> so that it is just a container for other elements, and 
remove <screenco> -- of course, that's something that would require a few 
revisions of DocBook to complete.

N
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