On Tue, 2004-08-31 at 10:48, Dave Pawson wrote:
On Tue, 2004-08-31 at 18:33, Karsten Wade wrote:
> In many situations, I'm not even sure I want any styling for the
> contents of _some_ of my <screen> and <programlisting> blocks (esp.
> <programlisting>). It should be unstyled fixed-width fonts, no bold, no
> extra fancy characters, no matter if it's utf-8 or iso-whatever.
<grin/> Which is a pretty good definition of a style IMHO.
Ha! You caught me there.
You can tell by my flip-flopping and half-thought-through opinions that
I'm not quite sure what is the best thing to do, which usually means
it's time to pick something that works and move on.
> If that is the case, then we wouldn't use CDATA blocks for
<screen>.
> FWIW, putting CDATA in e.g. <computeroutput/> does not validate, but it
> does build PDF and HTML.
Its not a validity issue. Simply well-formedness.
Odd, I did C-c C-v and got some validation errors, which, uh, aren't
occurring now. *shrug*
> * We modify current usage rules to show a couple of acceptable
styles
> and which ones are likely to break or cause problems. Specify that the
> point is not XML styling but quality of output -- if your code gets the
> desired output of no extra vertical or horizontal whitespace in PDF or
> HTML, then it's fine.
-1.
I'd have thought the project needs valid XML instances.
Which instances are valid and which are not?
I only meant, valid XML usage. Is there only one "right way"? If so,
then I guess this whole discussion is no longer moot!
> * <screen> has <computeroutput> or <userinput>
within it to be
> semantically correct.
Why isn't screen 'right' for the contents of the screen?
Or if you are talking about a programs output, or a user input,
then use computeroutput or userinput.
I would reckon that the usage came about this way from wanting to mark
all user input as <userinput> and all screen output as <computeroutput>,
whether it is inline in a <para/> or blocked in a <screen/>.
The idea would be, it should be marked as <...input/> or <...output/> in
all instances.
However, those tags cannot stand alone the way <screen> can. <screen/>
must be used to get the desired styling output. Just putting <para>
tags around the <...put/> tags would not be the same thing, semantically
or stylistically.
I'm guessing as to that reasoning; Ed or Tammy would be better to answer
that.
That reasoning makes some amount of sense to me.
> * <programlisting> always uses a CDATA section to preserve
every detail
> from processing (XSL and CSS included).
But thats the point of stylesheets Karsten, to apply style.
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xml-20040204/#sec-cdata-sect
An example of a CDATA section, in which "<greeting>" and
"</greeting>"
are recognized as character data, not markup:
<![CDATA[<greeting>Hello, world!</greeting>]]>
That's all CDATA sections do.
Okay, I concede that I'm getting myself into a confused corner.
For maintainability and ease of handing off documents to others for
editing and writing, I find using CDATA inside <programlisting> to be
invaluable. Perhaps we don't make this a hard requirement, just fix the
stylesheets so <programlisting> content output looks the same regardless
of CDATA usage (it may already do that), and leave it up to the author.
- Karsten
--
Karsten Wade, RHCE, Tech Writer
a lemon is just a melon in disguise
http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
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