Re: Followup to Norm's write up on numbering.

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

/ "Rowland, Larry" <larry.rowland@hp.com> was heard to say:
|  1) Add @startingnumber to ordered lists and procedures.  This is of
|     value where a short ordered list or procedure is
|     intended to provide an alternative to a section of an existing
|     procedure or list.  

I support adding @startingnumber to orderedlist, but I'm pretty
strongly opposed to putting it on procedure.

The only important semantic of procedure (to distinguish it from an
orderedlist) is that it means do step 1, then step 2, then step 3.
To have a procedure somewhere in a section that started with step 3 or
step 5 seems (to me) to completely betray the semantics of procedure.

We added stepalternatives to handle the case where there are
alternative steps. I think that's what the author should use.

For example, I'd recast your example as follows:

    To consolidate a set of application to a single server:

    Step 1

    Step 2

      * In the case where the applications have the same settings:

         substep a

         substep b

         substep c

      * In the case where the applications require different settings:

         Substep a

         Substep b

         Substep c

         Substep d

    Step 3

      * In the case where the applications have the same settings:

      * In the case where the applications require different settings:

    ...

    Step N

|  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

I dunno. This seems so uncommon that a PI should be sufficient. On the
other hand, if your world view is that the line numbers are every bit
a part of the content as the rest of the listing, then maybe it's
reasonable to provide direct control to the other. But on balance, I'd
rather not.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | What if this weren't a
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | hypothetical question?
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee |

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