Re: [docbook-apps] Simpler XHTML output

[Larry Garfield <larry@garfieldtech.com>]

Hi, Rene.  Yeah, I've done list styling before.  Way cool stuff on the 
rare chance you're using a real web browser instead of IE. :-)

I'd thought you meant for the navigation div to be the forward and back 
links, the stuff that's currently tables.  That is independent of the 
TOC, and should be handled/structured/styled differently.  (And just 
having the ul without having a named div above it wouldn't help me with 
the multiple-TOC styles I had in my example. <g>)

Although your post does exemplify the very different approach that we 
seem to be coming from, as I said before.  You're coming from an angle 
of "here's the source, if we were to do this from scratch with a total 
tear down, just how state of the art and cool can we make it?"  I'm 
coming from an angle of "We have a pretty good if not very up to date 
base that already has a lot of tricky issues solved.  Let's not reinvent 
the wheel, let's just update it a bit to be less 20th century."

Now, that's not to say that either angle is bad.  I happen to like 
things that are cool and state of the art. :-)  As I said, however, I 
want to avoid a "baby and bathwater" issue, primarily because I know for 
certain that there's plenty of stuff in DocBook that I've not even 
touched yet myself and therefore wouldn't be qualified (yet) to 
reinvent.  (The logic behind using h2 for all headers and then wrapping 
it in a div, for instance, is not very "pure" but makes a lot of sense, 
and is more flexible for CSSers.)  For that reason, I'd rather go 
through and, for instance, look at the dl/dt-based TOC and specifically 
change that to nested ul/li (a change I agree with) than start from 
scratch and end up missing something important along the way.

Hence my request for a full-featured test document earlier, as that 
would make both methods considerably easier. :-)

Do you see where I'm coming from?  It's not that I don't think we should 
have a "cutting edge" version, it's that I'd rather not undo design 
decisions made a while ago that have (I'd think) good reason behind them 
unless there is a specific reason for each.

Anyone with more knowledge of said decisions care to offer input? :-)

Rene Hache wrote:
> Larry,
> 
> 
>>I can do you one better, as it's online now.  Not the prettiest page
>>I've ever done, but it demonstrates what I'm talking about.
>>
>>http://www.star-fleet.com/library/handbook/
>>
>>Note how the TOC on the index page is "normal", while the TOCs on each
>>chapter page float right with an alternate background color.
> 
> 
> I've thinking about this, and I believe that we can do much better in
> terms of output, with simpler code. Remember that I was suggesting
> that each XHTML page have four ID divs: header, navigation, content
> and footer.
> 
> To me, what should go in the navigation div is a nested list, and from
> that list we could create a either a left, right or horizontal menu
> bar. We could also create a next/previous link in there, but the point
> is that we could create a entire DocBook navigation rather easily,
> without much code.
> 
> For example, code would output like the example below (please note
> that we could do this for as many levels of depth that we wanted.)
> 
> <div id="navigation">
>      <ul>
>            <li>Chapter Name
>                 <ul>
>                 <li>Section Name</li>
>                 <li>Section Name</li>
>            </li>
>      </ul>
> </div>
> 
> Anyway, to me this makes more sense: it's totally doable (to use a
> real technical term!), plus you can generate CSS drop down lists from
> that code. For examples of how you can style lists, check this site:
> http://css.maxdesign.com.a u/index.htm
> 
> Thanks,
> Rene

-- 
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
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