Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 15 Jul 2013 13:58:10 +0900 (JST)
From:      Hiroki Sato <hrs@FreeBSD.org>
To:        gabor@FreeBSD.org
Cc:        doc@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: RFC: Upgrading to DocBook 5.0
Message-ID:  <20130715.135810.1689066987888254665.hrs@allbsd.org>
In-Reply-To: <51E2EA74.9070008@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <51E2A6C9.1070301@FreeBSD.org> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1307140923450.61543@wonkity.com> <51E2EA74.9070008@FreeBSD.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
----Security_Multipart(Mon_Jul_15_13_58_10_2013_720)--
Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Gabor Kovesdan <gabor@freebsd.org> wrote
  in <51E2EA74.9070008@FreeBSD.org>:

ga> >> It breaks the list. It is even worse in PDF rendering since there are
ga> >> page boundaries and it breaks the page up to two parts.
ga> >
ga> > I see what you mean.  But if we say "don't use admonitions in lists
ga> > because they are visually ugly, that becomes markup for appearance and
ga> > not for semantics.
ga> It is not appearance, it is structure, which is part of
ga> semantics. From a semantic point of view, what's an admonition? Imo,
ga> it is a piece of additional information that (1) is related to the
ga> wider context, (2) is more or less self-contained and (3) does not fit
ga> into the main text flow so its position is more or less flexible. It
ga> is usually rendereded with a border or a background color that clearly
ga> separates it from the main flow of the text. Because of these
ga> characteristics, it semantically doesn't fit into the notion of
ga> lists. Nor tables should be embedded into lists.

 I agree that admonition in a list/table does not make sense
 semantically.  Probably people abuse it as a replacement of footnote.

ga> > Again, doesn't this break the semantics versus appearance separation?
ga> > If the standard is to show titles in a single font and size, then that
ga> > should be done when rendering.  Semantically, a filename is a filename
ga> > whether it is in a title or body text.
ga> You are calling appearance what is in fact structure. We could talk
ga> about appearance if we wrote <bold> or something like that.
ga>
ga> The semantics of a title could be defined like a plain text title and
ga> that would be a valid semantics, too. True, it is also possible to
ga> solve it when rendering but if we decide that we don't want such in
ga> titles, why not just changing the semantics and sparing some
ga> stylesheet code? Both the docs and the stylesheets would be more
ga> simple.

 I like to solve this upon rendering and I think it will be simpler
 because a policy of plain text title (in markup) practically does not
 work without DTD change, and elements such as <replaceable> can be
 included in title elements via entity references or so in any way.
 Forcing a consistent style for title elements looks easy to me.

ga> >> Examples: just google for CALS table and HTML table, both are
ga> >> documented extensively.
ga> >
ga> > For reference, here are links:
ga> >
ga> > http://www.docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/cals.table.html
ga> > http://www.docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/html.table.html
ga> >
ga> > Changing the source documents could be scripted, but would also
ga> > require modifications to the FDP Primer.
ga> >
ga> > I can't tell if HTML tables have all the same capabilities as CALS
ga> > tables.
ga> The same information is stored so theoretically it is possible to do
ga> the same with them. HTML table markup is more simple and the stock
ga> stylesheets implement more features.

 I am neutral about this.  The difference in their capability is quite
 small.  XHTML table model may be better for people who are familiar
 with XHTML.

ga> > The previous toolchain rendered that title in bold:
ga> > http://docs.freebsd.org/doc/9.0-RELEASE/usr/share/doc/freebsd/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall-pre.html
ga> > Agreed, that title does not look very good.  Adding a colon to list
ga> > titles when rendering would help.  Removing all list titles be too
ga> > severe.
ga> Having a colon at the end of the paragraph and another one at the end
ga> of the list title? It seems even more confusing to me.
ga> Why is to severe removing them? Do they add any extra information that
ga> helps you understanding the content? I think it makes the
ga> comprehension more difficult and is just counter-productive.
ga>
ga> Can you find a published book with such list titles?

 I think removing title is fine.  Although there are some exmaples for
 such an informal title like this:

  Pros:
   - A
   - B

  Cons:
   - C
   - D

 they are items, not "title" actually.  If we really need it, it
 should be a caption.

-- Hiroki

----Security_Multipart(Mon_Jul_15_13_58_10_2013_720)--
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.13 (FreeBSD)

iEYEABECAAYFAlHjgWIACgkQTyzT2CeTzy35sQCdF3/fZ74UsN8fzCl9TSBgd0CV
BucAn15Lqi6SelJYAx3DMo6iPpYg/YGB
=aqXZ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

----Security_Multipart(Mon_Jul_15_13_58_10_2013_720)----



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20130715.135810.1689066987888254665.hrs>