Re: [office] Proposal for lists/numbered paragraphs

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

[Fourth (!) attempt--OASIS server bounced my first 3 attempts. pbg]

At 17:26 2003 03 16 +0100, David Faure wrote:
>On Thursday 13 March 2003 21:10, Daniel Vogelheim wrote:
>
>Very interesting reasoning and development of the issue.
>
>> [...]
>> The next suggestion (Michael) uses that as base, but adds an 'escape' 
>> [i.e. declaring an individual paragraph to be listed at some level] to 
>> take away some of the burden from the filter people
>> [...]
>> As a general guideline, I would say that 'clean' XML solutions are to be 
>> preferred _if_ they can represent existing documents.
>
>I think this raises the following question: shouldn't discontinued lists,
>(like the numbering of tables, pictures, etc.) be modelled with the
>above solution? This would be, I think, "cleaner" in terms of structure
>than the current OO solution (of autonumbered variables).

No, see, that's my problem with this unstructured escape business:
once you start, people see everything as "labeled paragraphs."

>1. pict one
>2. pict two
>1) table one
>2) table two
>3. pict three
>(1). equation one
>3) table three
>(2). equation two
>4. pict four
>
>Each paragraph belongs to one of the 3 discontinued lists going on here
>(picts, tables, equations).

No, not at all.  These are not lists any more than numbered titles
of sections and chapters are lists.

>I think this would even allow some more features than simple autonumbered
>counters, like being able to refer to a given picture twice without getting
>the number increased twice. It would also give all the features available for
>list counters (without having to redevelop or refactor the code for auto-
>numbered variables).

And would destroy any hope of being able to map this into appropriate
structure for either a DTD such as DocBook or for any XSL processing.


>For such lists there is obviously no "XML-structured list" solution. 

Right--because these aren't lists.

>However
>the closest XML-clean solution is simply to associate each paragraph with
>a list style.... and to set the continue-numbering flag.

Unless I'm misunderstanding things (which is a distinct possibility), 
I completely disagree.

paul