Please implement the formatting element "line break" (e.g. <br/>

["Johannes Graubner \(Transcom\)" <graubner@transcom.de>]

Dear Sirs

 

I do not know why you considered the line break element as superfluous: Certainly it is not. And it does not break the general rule, that content and formatting should be separated (at least since you accept that elements such as <b> and <i> are needed for tagging contents).

 

Reasons

 

A line break (<br/>) serves an important, content related purpose: As opposed to a new paragraph (such as <p>) it keeps together lines that belong together.

·         While a paragraph may have an additional spacing above and/or below (in addition to the line feed), a line break only allows for a line feed.
This applies to any publication media.

·         While formatting rules may allow for column or page breaks between paragraphs, a single line separated by a line break from the rest of the paragraph usually is kept together with the previous line(s) of the same paragraph.
This applies to paper publications only.

 

Without line breaks, the two bullet points above look like this:

·         While a paragraph may have an additional spacing above and/or below (in addition to the line feed), a line break only allows for a line feed.

This applies to any publication media.

·         While formatting rules may allow for column or page breaks between paragraphs, a single line separated by a line break from the rest of the paragraph usually is kept together with the previous line(s) of the same paragraph.

This applies to paper publications only.

 

I.e. the short “This applies…“ line is visually not immediately recognizable as directly belonging to the lines above. Instead it could even be a kind of lead-in into the next bullet point (even more, if there would be a column/page break before).

 

Could you please include the line break element in DITA?

 

Kind regards

 

Johannes Graubner

 

Transcom. Ing.-Buero Johannes Graubner
Engineers for technical communication
- manuals - training - internet -

 

mailto:graubner@transcom.de        Tel. +49-179-66 55 215
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