Re: [docbook-tc] Followup to Norm's write up on numbering.

[Jirka Kosek <jirka@kosek.cz>]

Rowland, Larry wrote:

>  2) Add an optional @linenumberstep (or something similar) that allows
>     the author to override the global setting for line number
>     increment.  This is not to say that the stylesheet should not be
>     as intelligent as possible about when to use the step increments
>     based on the length of the example.  This is to accommodate those
>     special cases where the stylesheet rules are producing
>     inappropriate behavior for the specific case being dealt with.
> 
>     Example:
> 
>     Two programs are being discussed, one a short program that
>     interacts with a longer program.  The short program is just over
>     the length of listing that triggers numbering by steps in the
>     style-sheets, but the author prefers the emphasis on details that
>     the line numbering provides when every line is numbered.  For the
>     fragments of the longer program, the decisions on when to use
>     steps in line numbers are considered appropriate.  The author
>     chooses to override the step size (setting @linenumberstep to 1)
>     for the short driver program, while leaving the default values in
>     place for the fragments of the larger program.
> 
>     This is, perhaps, even more important where the style-sheets do not
>     make any attempt at providing differing behaviors based on the
>     length of the code fragment.  The author would be likely to want
>     to override the step increment on more of the program listings.

Let me say that I still think that such attribute is completely 
presentional and it should not be added to DocBook. Each programlisting 
has invisible intrinsic line numbers -- you can always start counting 
line numbers from the start of listing manually. Of course if you 
reference line numbers it is more then reasonable to display line 
numbers to make navigation to particular line number easier. But even 
without such facility, you can find line number in discussion.

But particular type of numbering (fonts, number of digits, increment) is 
completely presentional issue which should be handled by processing 
system (stylesheets, editor, ...). Line numbering step is similar to 
auto numbering of sections -- there is also no DocBook markup to control 
depth of auto numbering.

I'm sure that in 99,99 % of cases you can control line numbering step 
automatically in stylesheets. For this 0,01 % you can always put 
something like role="densenumbering" to your programlistings.

During last telcon someone was arguing that he/she doesn't like using 
custom attributes and custom stylesheets for handling such cases. Well, 
but how do you then control situations in which for example:

- each document has different depth of autolabeling of sections
- some book/chapters should/shouldn't contain toc/lot
- ...

I would really appreciate if DocBook can contain as less presentational 
markup as possible. DocBook was designed as an interchange format which 
captures semantics. @linenumberstep attribute doesn't improve semantic, 
nor possibilities of interchange.

			Jirka

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   Jirka Kosek     e-mail: jirka@kosek.cz     http://www.kosek.cz
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