Re: DAVENPORT: One question

[Terry Allen <tallen@sonic.net>]

Nick Clayton wrote:
| On Sun, Jun 27, 1999 at 09:57:59PM -0400, Adam Di Carlo wrote:
| > Rafael Jesus Alcantara Perez <ralcan@vnet.es> writes:
| > > I have been using DocBook for a while, and I have found it very
| > > useful. Besides that, I have a question: I use the tag 'emphasis',
| > > but I would like to have bold-italic or, at least, bold fonts. Do I
| > > have missed the proper tag?
| > 
| > This is a styling issue, not a DocBook issue per se.  See the
| > documentation with whatever you are using to style your text.
| > 
| > SGML and XML are all about the logical markup of text.  As such,
| > issues of styling such as these fall below the radar, as it were, or
| > should at least.  
| 
| Just to clarify -- IMHO, this is not strictly true.  You can create a 
| markup language using SGML or XML in which the elements do denote 
| different formatting styles.

Absolutely.  Docbook's inline markup was designed orginally to distinguish
among strings that were presented in different styles in
print books, and to distinguish among them on the basis of their semantics.
It has always been a requirement that (with the help of a style sheet)
you be able to get the inline formatting you want (if you want something
reasonable and consistent).

But the choice between italic and bold and bold italic is one to make
in the style sheet.  If semantic markup in Docbook is insufficient for
distinctions you (Mr. Alcantara Perez) want to make, try using the common 
attribute Role, and if you think your distinctions would be useful generally, 
please post to this list and give examples.

If you want <italic> and <bold> because you don't want to bother with
semantic markup (which is entirely reasonable in many cases, specifically
conversion from other markup), you can use <phrase role="bold"> and
<phrase role="italic">, although you can't count on much interoperability.

| Indeed, this might be useful if you were creating a markup language to
| describe information that had originally been printed, where the 
| formatting of the information was an important part of the information
| itself.  And HTML is an example of an SGML language (application, for
| the purists) that does have elements (rightly or wrongly) for style.

Yes, one reasonable approach to getting existing books into Docbook
is to punt on the markup of inlines and substitute formatting-specific
elements.  I've done that ...

And formatting-specific element are just right for HTML - although way 
back when, interpretation of some elements loosely bound to formatting 
was at the whim of the browser author.

| It would be more correct to say that DocBook is about the logical markup
| of text, and that issues of styling fall below its radar, yes?

I want to say it the other way around:  Docbook should give you the
semantic ("logical") markup to get the style of output you want (if
you are doing software documentation and not, say, print ads - and
even there you could use <phrase role="largelettersfornoreason">).

And if it doesn't, we want to hear about it.

That said, I'm noticing an increasing number of questions about how
to use Norm's excellent and supererogatory style sheets, including at
times some lack of clarity about whether they are part of the DTD itself.
(This indicates that the style sheets are becoming an indispensible part 
of any Docbook tool kit, and Norm can take full credit both for enabling
users to do what they want and for making Docbook a model of a well
supported application using open standards throughout.)

Would it be worthwhile to start another list, "docbook-formatting"?

regards, Terry