epub transform bug? sidebar without title bolds everything? (bad rendering in Firefox?)

[Robert Nagle <idiotprogrammer@gmail.com>]

 I've been having issues with epub output of a docbook 5 project. This
problem does NOT occur when I use the HTML chunk XSL transform.

I have 3 questions:

 1. why does epub HTML  output for sidebar.title include a <b/> tag?
 2. why does  <b/> in Firefox and IE cause all remaining html
paragraphs to render as bold when a title element in sidebar is empty?
 3.is there a docbook way to suppress the display of the
sidebar.title? (I know you could do it in css).

If sidebar.title is to be visible, it would seem odd for the html
output to use <b> (instead of <strong> for example).


I have a test project with xincludes, a customization layer and a
title.xsl generated by titlepage.templates.xml . Below is a version of
it without xincludes to illustrate the problem.

The main index.xml file validates even if  I fail to put a title
element inside the sidebar. All  text following it in the browser (IE
& firefox)  will be bold as a result of the b tags.  The same thing
will happen if I include an empty title here. If I include a title tag
with a value, everything will render correctly (although the <b> tag
still appears.

Looking at docbook reference
http://www.docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/sidebar.html , I see that sidebar
requires a title --even though my docbook validated just fine without
one. Strange.

Anyone know what's up?

Thanks.

rj



HTML Output from epub docbook.xsl  looks like this:

           <div class="epigraph"><p> This is an epigraph</p></div>
           <p>This is a test before sidebar. </p>
 <!----------------------------------- an empty title element inside
sidebar  the random </b> tag below  screws up the rendering in the
browser!!!!!!!!
------------------------------------------------------------------------->
           <div class="sidebar"><p class="title"><b/></p>

               <div class="mediaobject"><img src="myimages/image.jpg"
alt="Artist name"/><div class="caption">
                       <p>  Name of Painting </p>
                   </div></div>
           </div>
           <p>hello One day, <span class="strong"><strong>
strong</strong></span>Littering a dark and
               dreary road lay the past relics of browser-specific
tags, incompatible DOMs, and
               broken CSS support.</p>

here is the source xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?oxygen RNGSchema="http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/5.0/rng/docbookxi.rng";
type="xml"?>
<!DOCTYPE book [
<!ENTITY % isopub SYSTEM "http://www.w3.org/2003/entities/iso8879/isopub.ent";>
%isopub;
]>
<book xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook";
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude";
   xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"; version="5.0">
   <info>
       <title>Book Project </title>
       <author>
           <personname>
               <firstname>Robert </firstname>
               <surname>Nagle</surname>
           </personname>
       </author>

       <volumenum>1234</volumenum>
   </info>
   <preface label="preface">
       <title>Preface Title</title>
       <mediaobject>
           <imageobject>
               <imagedata fileref="myimages/fornarina3.jpg" format="JPG"/>
           </imageobject>
       </mediaobject>

   </preface>

   <part label="firststory">
       <title> Notions &mdash;</title>
       <chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"; version="5.0"
xml:id="er1">

           <title>First Story</title>
           <info>
               <annotation role="chaptersummary">
                   <para>This is a chapter summary </para>
               </annotation>
           </info>

           <epigraph>

               <para> This is an epigraph</para>
           </epigraph>
           <para>This is a test before sidebar. </para>
           <sidebar>
<!--                    <title>hello</title>-->
<!-----------------------------------------------     i'm showing what
happens when title is empty or missing or commented out
----------------------------------------------------------------------------->
               <mediaobject>

                   <imageobject>
                       <imagedata fileref="myimages/image.jpg" format="JPG"/>
                   </imageobject>
                   <textobject>
                       <phrase>Artist name </phrase>
                   </textobject>
                   <caption>
                       <para>  Name of Painting </para>
                   </caption>
               </mediaobject>
           </sidebar>
           <para>hello One day, <emphasis role="strong">
strong</emphasis>Littering a dark and
               dreary road lay the past relics of browser-specific
tags, incompatible DOMs, and
               broken CSS support.</para>
       </chapter>
   </part>
</book>




--
Robert Nagle
http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/