DOCBOOK: List Items with titles

["Poulter, Adele" <apoulter@gresham-computing.com>]

Hi all

I'm tech lead for a team just starting on our first structured markup
project, using DocBook XML V4.1.2 to recreate a legacy manual as XML.

The legacy manual has a lot of ordered lists in which the listitems have
titles, like this:-


(a) TITLE OF ITEM A
    list item content ...

(b) TITLE OF ITEM B
    list item content ...


I can see from the listitem synopsis in the duck book that I could use the
bridgehead element for the listitem title text, but I don't want to stray to
the dark side this early in my XML career ;^) (yes, I've been reading
appendix F in The Definitive Guide, point 45)

It seems that it would be more elegant if I customise DocBook to add a
formallistitem element that works like formalpara:-

formallistitem :: =
(title,(indexterm)*,listitem)

but before I attempt this, I'd welcome input on:-
- whether this approach is a good one
- alternative suggestions
- tech details from anyone with experience of customising lists.

TIA

regards
Adele Poulter

Gresham Computing
Email:	apoulter@gresham-computing.com

http://www.gresham-computing.com