OASIS Mailing List ArchivesView the OASIS mailing list archive below
or browse/search using MarkMail.

 


Help: OASIS Mailing Lists Help | MarkMail Help

docbook-apps message

[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [Elist Home]


Subject: Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Re: Windows editor for DocBook XML that does notmess with files?


On Mon, Nov 26, 2001 at 07:07:29AM -0500, Norman Walsh wrote:
> / Ed Nixon <ed.nixon@LynnParkPlace.org> was heard to say:
> | This can be configured or customized out of the XMetaL environment for
> | designated tags. It's an option under the Customization > Text menu.
> | The most recent example, in my experience, being <programlisting>.
> 
> That's probably related to significant whitespace, not insignificant
> whitespace. The issue for Dan, I think, is that he'd like the
> whitespace between paras, for example, preserved. Any XML editor has
> to be able to preserve the whitespace in programlistings.

Actually, it is stronger than that.  XMetal will preserve
insignificant whitespace if you get the right set of
customization options set.  But then XMetal doesn't wrap
lines and won't insert any line breaks either as you enter
text and elements, so you end up with very long lines in
your XML file.  Although you don't see those long lines in
XMetal's TagsOn view, other editors will see them and
perhaps not enjoy them.

If you do have line wrap on in XMetal,
then it exhibits an odd bug with mixed content elements,
which SoftQuad claims is not a bug.  If you have a
para like this:

<para>My text with <emphasis>a big</emphasis> word.</para>

If this line rewraps, the space to the left of <emphasis>
and to the right of </emphasis> may be lost.  SoftQuad
claims that such spaces are not significant because they
are between nodes, but try to explain that to your reviewer.  8^)
I've tried to convince them it is a bug.

I've worked around it by carefully setting the
customization to preserve whitespace in all mixed content
elements in DocBook.  The XMetal stylesheet files that I
put under Docbook's Sourceforge contrib area has those
settings.  As such, newly typed para's are single line,
but at least the significant white space between
words is preserved.

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
Publications Architect                      Santa Cruz, CA  95060
Technical Publications                      voice: (831) 427-7796
Caldera International, Inc.                 fax:   (831) 429-1887
                                            email: bobs@caldera.com


[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [Elist Home]


Powered by eList eXpress LLC