Re: DOCBOOK: marking up keycaps according to their semantics

[Tobias Reif <tobiasreif at pinkjuice dot com>]

Bob

> Let me see if I understand you.  You are suggesting that
> the DTD be changed


Yes, probably best extended.

> so that keycap can have a way of
> identifying certain keys that have functions that go
> beyond entering a character.


Yep; many keys don't really enter characters (where character is 
something which very closely is tied to a certain set of glyphs).

> You want to capture the
> semantic concept of a Ctrl key, so that it can be expressed
> by the stylesheets in many ways rather than as a literal
> key name, right?


yep :)

> So for Emacs doc, a stylesheet would
> render it as "C", while another stylesheet would
> say "Ctrl". In other languages it could be
> translated by the gentext files.


This would be one of the advantages of a more semantic notation, yes.

Generate "ctrl" in the English version, "strg" in the German one, etc.


> This would seem to apply to just a few keys, like
> Alt, Esc, Shift, and Ctrl at least.  Maybe Enter as well?
> Or should it be for all the named keys, including Insert,
> Home, etc.?


This would need to be discussed. But I'm sure we could specify a list 
which makes sense as a starting point, eg:

* enter
* alt (meta)
* shift
* ctrl
* "arrow keys": up, right, down, left
* escape
* backspace
* tab
* space
* delete
* F1-12

perhaps also

* help
* page up / down
* command-key (Mac)
[etc?]

It would need to be discussed what people need: Emacs user, Vim users, etc.

In Vim for example,
  :help key-notation
brings
  http://vim.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/intro.html#key-notation


> Were you thinking of an enumerated list of values
> for an attribute on keycap?


The syntax may be best figured out by people like you, who are very 
familiar with the DocBook language.

But I like your suggestion. What name would you suggest?

  <keycap function="shift">[shift]</keycap>

where the content of the element is the suggested default ASCII 
rendering. But also allow for empty elements:

  <keycap function="shift"/>

so that

  <keycombo action="simul">
    <keycap function="control">
    <keycap>h</keycap>
  </keycombo>

Pure semantics, no rendering info. The transformer/renderer can then 
provide a default rendering (eg pics, ASCII), and the customizer can 
override it.

Or a new element

  <input type="shift"/>

... since some people use other means than keyboard to enter input.


Tobi


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