Re: [docbook-tc] Past discussion of 482821 Add introductory materialto lists

[Michael Smith <smith@xml-doc.org>]

Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> writes:

> Search for references to RFE 144 and/or 145 in the DocBook TC mailing list
> archives starting in March and working forward.

As I mentioned during the TC telcon, I don't want to belabor
discussion of this unnecessarily. But I would like at least to recap
the past discussions for the record. I'll try to keep it as short...

Back in March, I wrote[0] to the TC list about RFE 144, suggesting
that the need expressed in RFE 144 could be satisfied by enclosing a
list in a Para. Norm responded to say that wouldn't work for the case
of a titled list, so I suggested Formalpara for that case. Like this:

<formalpara>
  <title>Unsupported items</title>
  <para>
  The current implementation of the product does not yet fully support
  the following items:
    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>namespace attribute inheritance</para>
      ...

Then there were some postings from Terry Allen and me and Norm on the
general DocBook list in response to Sabine's postings[1][2] asking for
comments on RFE 145 and my related posting about adding a container
for Steps in Procedure[3][4].

In one of those messages, I mentioned that the content model for
Procedure allows %component.mix; to occur before Steps. Terry posted a
response[5]. Though he didn't agree with me about the need for adding
a container for Steps, I think he did agree there was a problem with
Procedure allowing %component.mix; to occur before Steps

  I'm beginning to think this was a bad idea. We should not have
  allowed intro material within procedure, but instead have forced it
  to be in a containing section, ahead of the procedure. The result of
  what we allowed is creep toward making formal objects the equivalent
  of sections - which will cause unneeded complexity and
  inconsistency, and increase the cost of maintenance of the DTD,
  instances, and processing software.

And in his response[6] to another message I posted[7] mentioning that
I didn't think the Procedure content model should be used as a
precedent for making changes to the other list content models (RFE
144), Terry wrote:

  RFE 144 is adding intro material to lists. I see now (though I
  didn't before) that this is not a good idea.

  But at this point I'll leave things to the Docbook TC.

Norm replied[8]:

  Technically, we've already accepted RFE 144 so the current models of
  orderedlist, variablelist, calloutlist, procedure, and itemizedlist
  all allow:

  optional title
  optional bag of stuff
  one or more items

  Perhaps this was not the best choice, but it was the model that
  Procedure allowed and there's never (before) been a complaint about
  that aspect of procedures.

And he also listed some reasons why he didn't think an additional
container element for Steps was needed. I posted a message[9] in
response to that, and I don't think there was any further discussions
about it on the lists after that.

Regards,

  --Mike
  

[0] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200103/msg00001.html
[1] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200103/msg00040.html
[2] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200103/msg00106.html
[3] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200103/msg00129.html
[4] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200103/msg00130.html
[5] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200104/msg00000.html
[6] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200104/msg00012.html
[7] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200104/msg00003.html
[8] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200104/msg00013.html
[9] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200104/msg00016.html