RE: DOCBOOK: Re: any reason why a "procedure" is not a child of "para"?

["Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@mindspring.com>]

On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, David Cramer wrote:

> Nested procedures, procedures inside of tables, etc. would be messy--not
> sure how you'd number them. <substeps> allows you to nest procedures
> without that problem. I think no procedures in paras is a good thing.

i don't follow this logic.  in a way, a procedure is just another
kind of list, if you want to look at it that way.  and, certainly,
all of the list-type elements can be children of paras.

way back when i was just getting into docbook, i asked whether
folks recommended making a list a child of a para, or the next
sibling element.  the response was to consider whether the
list and the para were inherently linked, so that it made no
sense to have one without the other.

consider a possible para:

  <para>If you want to start writing in DocBook, here are the
   steps you'll need to do:
   <procedure>
    ....
   </procedure>
  </para>

this makes perfect sense, and it's clear that the <procedure>
element logically belongs within the paragraph.

*note*: i'm not saying that procedures *must* be children of
paragraphs, obviously.  only that, to be consistent with the
other lists, it should have the option.

rday