Re: [Boost-docs] [quickbook] Breaking a line

Subject: Re: [Boost-docs] [quickbook] Breaking a line
From: Joel de Guzman (joel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-01-26 01:45:07

On 1/26/2011 6:40 AM, Edward Diener wrote:
> On 1/25/2011 3:39 PM, Daniel James wrote:
>> On 25 January 2011 18:15, John Maddock<boost.regex_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>>>> FWIW there should be a way to define an XSLT transform for a certain
>>>> Boostbook tag to use the appropriate HTML+CSS combo for properly
>>>> displaying a "broken line" without having to use the<br/> tag in
>>>> HTML. I just don't know enough Boostbook to be able to do that though.
>>>
>>> It's only really possible to do this via a processing instruction hack:
>>> http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/LineBreaks.html
>>
>> I really should get round to dealing with processing instructions.
>>
>> For anyone who doesn't know, the way quickbook deals with newlines is
>> to use a '<sbr/>' tag. These are only valid in very specific locations
>> (only command synopsis and BNF notation I think) - certainly not in
>> paragraphs which is where they appear in quickbook generated
>> documentation. The docbook xsl conversion to html does support them
>> but there's a good chance that they won't work elsewhere.
>>
>> http://www.docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/sbr.html
>>
>> The warnings probably could be less noisy and less harsh, but because
>> of this I wouldn't want to go warning free, since this is a potential
>> problem.
>
> It is still utterly beyond me why Docbook considers paragraphs part of structure but does
> not consider lines as part of structure.
>
> I am going to solve the problem of breaking a line by making a new paragraph each time I
> would have had a line break. The extra blank line will look poor compared to a simple line
> break, but when one deals with the people ( the docbook designers ) who make rules which
> seem idiotic to me it is easier and less time consuming to play by those rules than to try
> to change anybody's mind.

I used to be very strict about separation of data and presentation.
Dean provided a long history. I was the one who actually deprecated
[br] and /n because of the reasons Daniel mentioned. I guess I could
say that I am getting mellower over the years and now I don't care
too much anymore. I also doubt it very much if the behavior will
change over time as a lot of DocBook documents rely on this behavior.
The "feature" does not hurt and it will be a totally gratuitous move
if they did change the behavior: they will gain nothing in doing so.

That said, I'm fine with whatever Daniel recommends since he's the
current maintainer now.

Regards,
-- 
Joel de Guzman
http://www.boostpro.com
http://boost-spirit.com