I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the last two dozen or so emails on
this topic. I'm late joining in, but that's just one of the problems
of living a long way west of Greenwich.
It seems to me that there are two distinct problems.
1. Is Oxygen corrupting the pure XML distinction between structure
and presentation by introducing 'bold' and 'italic' into XML when
what they should be doing is offering different ways of emphasizing
text. The Oxygen solution is no different to what I do when I use
<emphasis role="bold"> and define how to present 'bold' in my
customization layer. Unfortunately 'bold' and 'italic' are emotive
terms which carry presentation meaning - but doesn't <para> also do
this as well, we all know roughly what a paragraph looks like.
Anyway, if you use Oxygen 9 you don't have to switch to author view
if you prefer typing tags.
2. Is Docbook lacking in structural elements? Particularly in
different types of emphasis. This I think is the real problem. I
think we can all agree that a block element such as <chapter> is a
structural element, so is a <section> and a <para> etc. When we come
to in-line elements, docbook offers us two choices which seem to
imply presentation <quote> (put it in quotes) and <emphasis> (make it
stand out from running text in some way.) The trouble is that for
some in-line elements the distinction between structural elements and
presentation directives is less clear:
If I say "I want this bit in italics" then that is mixing structure
and presentation (a la Word).
If I say "I want this bit emphasized" then that is a structural
element, and how I (or docbook) choose to present this 'bit' is
determined in a style sheet.
But what if I want different ways (or levels) of emphasis.
In my work when I use <emphasis role="bold"> it is my customization
layer to the docbook style sheet which determines how to present
'bold', it happens to be 'B', but it could be 'I', 'U', or anything
else. It is using the term 'bold' which introduces confusion;
everyone knows what bold text looks like. I presume this is why Norm
chose the term <emphasis>, to get away from the 'B', 'I', 'U'
syndrome.
The fact is that writers DO want to emphasize 'bits' in different
ways. What is needed in docbook is a set of different ways to
emphasize 'bits', and to be semantically acceptable the element names
should not carry connotations such as 'bold'. Someone suggested
<emphasis role="5"> - but then I would have to define that '5' means
'underline etc. (or remember it if it was a default action.)
Perhaps what we should do first is try and define all the different
ways in which authors want to write structural 'bits' which
distinguishe them from normal running text
The docbook <para> element already offers a very wide selection of
elements which all have clear structural meaning, abbrev, acronym,
address, author, caution, phrase etc. etc., and how these are
presented is defined in the style sheets. The odd one out seem to be
<emphasis> which seems to imply considerable presentation of this
structural unit. Of course subscript and superscript certainly imply
presentation very strongly.
The XML and Docbook point is that all these can be re-defined to be
presented in any way you like (even superscript!)
However, there does seem to be a very real need for distinguishing
between different types of emphasis. The knee-jerk reaction is that
you can't use terms like 'bold' and 'italic' in XML: that is heresy.
Does the answer to all this lie in Roget's Thesaurus?
Could we accept <emphasis role="xxx">
where 'xxx' is ...........?
--
Ron Catterall, Phd, DSc email:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Prolongacion de Hidalgo 140 http://catterall.net/
San Felipe del Agua tel: +52 951 520 1821
Oaxaca 68020 Mexico fax: +1 530 348 8309
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