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Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] DocBook XSL 1.67.0 released
Michael Smith wrote: > And are you saying that "code" should be used at all? That any > instance of code should be samp or kbd instead? It seems to me > that there are only a couple of cases where kbd and samp might be > appropriate. No, of course not. code is clearly appropriate for content that is in fact code. However it's not appropriate for user input, computer output, e-mail messages, and other monospaced content that is not actually source code. > Anyway, I was the one who made that change and at time time, I > actually we should be using samp or kbd in some instances. > > The reason I didn't use samp or kbd is that the templates that > insert the HTML markup in these cases are named templates > (inline.monoseq, inline.boldmonoseq, inline.italicmonoseq, > format.sgmltag) that are called by the various element templates. Perhaps the problem is that these templates assume there's a single monospace font. This is not always the case. There are different uses of monospace type in technical books, and these are often called out in separate fonts and styles. Most O'Reilly books do this, for example. > So we would need to add some conditional logic to those named > templates to use code, samp, or kbd depending on the name of the > DocBook element. It didn't seem to me at the time like it was > worth the trouble, but I guess I can do t for the next release. > > Here is the list of elements and the mappings that seem right to > me. Please let me know if it looks correct to you or what you > think should be changed. This mostly looks right. However, looking at the HTML 4.0 spec we have one additional monospaced style that's appropriate for some of these: var, which "Indicates an instance of a variable or program argument.". Based on that I'd make these changes: > classname code > code code > command strong+code This one's tricky, but I'd probably say b+kbd. > computeroutput samp > constant code var > email code samp > envar code var > exceptionname code > filename code samp > function code > interfacename code > literal code > methodname code > option kbd > parameter em+code var. No em. > prompt samp > replaceable em+kbd > sgmltag code > structfield code var > sytemitem code > uri code I'm not sure this one should be monospaced at all. > userinput strong+kbd No strong. Just kbd. > varname code var Longer term, I'd also think about whether a few of these like systemitem, filename, and email need to be indicated with <span style="font-style: monospace"> instead of using code or samp at all. HTML is not as expressive as DocBook so clearly we're going to lose some semantics when transforming to HTML. However, we really shouldn't change the semantics, or add inaccurate semantics if we can help it. For the same reason we probably shouldn't be using strong or em for any of these, except maybe replaceable. I can believe replaceable is emphasized. However there's no fundamental reason that a command is strongly emphasized. What's being done here is using the strong and em elements as font style elements. If you don't want to use CSS it would be preferable to use the genuine font style elements b and i, deprecated though they are, to misusing strong and em. -- Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo@metalab.unc.edu XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published! http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim
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