Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 14:51:29 +0100 From: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org> To: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org> Cc: "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@futuresouth.com>, Tim Vanderhoek <vanderh@ecf.utoronto.ca>, Motoyuki Konno <motoyuki@snipe.rim.or.jp>, freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: DocBook formatting style? Message-ID: <19990828145129.A5750@catkin.nothing-going-on.org> In-Reply-To: <19990827105043.A15526@kilt.nothing-going-on.org>; from Nik Clayton on Fri, Aug 27, 1999 at 10:50:43AM %2B0100 References: <19990822200737.A65807@ppp18344.on.bellglobal.com> <19990823141611.A1770@catkin.nothing-going-on.org> <19990823172005.C42397@ppp18344.on.bellglobal.com> <19990824172812.L65430@kilt.nothing-going-on.org> <199908250049.JAA00382@rei.snipe.rim.or.jp> <19990825115510.A96398@kilt.nothing-going-on.org> <19990825194348.G18970@ppp18415.on.bellglobal.com> <19990826111447.C66300@kilt.nothing-going-on.org> <19990826141141.F24968@futuresouth.com> <19990827105043.A15526@kilt.nothing-going-on.org>
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To reply to myself;
On Fri, Aug 27, 1999 at 10:50:43AM +0100, Nik Clayton wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 26, 1999 at 02:11:42PM -0500, Matthew D. Fuller wrote:
> > I'm in favor of putting markup tags on their own line. Thus:
> > <para>
> > For all the hype about open standards, getting a program to work on
> > different versions of Unix in the real world can be a tedious and
> > tricky business, as anyone who has tried it will know
> > ...
> > With most programs, you will find yourself doing a fair bit of
> > head-scratching, and there are quite a few programs that will result
> > in premature greying, or even chronic alopecia...
> > </para>
> >
> > But that may just be a personal quirk.
>
> We probably shouldn't, as within some elements the whitespace is
> significant (<programlisting> and <screen> come to mind). Note that the
> advice currently given in the primer is wrong about this, and I'll be
> fixing it tonight.
With an eye to the future, I just spotted this quote from Norm Walsh on
the Davenport mailing list;
<blockquote>
I don't know of one, but on the topic of indentation, I have to say,
"be aware of whitespace".
<para>
My own style has always been to write things like this.
</para>
But in mixed-content elements (any element that can contain
character data is "mixed-content" as opposed to
"element-content" where only elements are allowed), that
carriage return may be significant. SGML has some interesting
rules about this, but XML does not. In XML, that space is
significant.
If your processor doesn't do the right thing with leading and
embedded whitespace, you might not get happy results.
<para>I'm now trying to train myself to type like this.
</para>
</blockquote>
I'm about to reply to Norm about this, and mention the "\n</programlisting>"
problem above. And, with an eye to the future, while we're not using XML
now, I wouldn't be surprised if it played a much more significant role in
our documentation tool set in 12-18 months time.
N
--
[intentional self-reference] can be easily accommodated using a blessed,
non-self-referential dummy head-node whose own object destructor severs
the links.
-- Tom Christiansen in <375143b5@cs.colorado.edu>
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