Norman Walsh <
ndw@nwalsh.com> writes: > Search for references to RFE 144 and/or 145 in the DocBook TC mailing list > archives starting in March and working forward. As I mentioned during the TC telcon, I don't want to belabor discussion of this unnecessarily. But I would like at least to recap the past discussions for the record. I'll try to keep it as short... Back in March, I wrote[0] to the TC list about RFE 144, suggesting that the need expressed in RFE 144 could be satisfied by enclosing a list in a Para. Norm responded to say that wouldn't work for the case of a titled list, so I suggested Formalpara for that case. Like this: <formalpara> <title>Unsupported items</title> <para> The current implementation of the product does not yet fully support the following items: <itemizedlist> <listitem> <para>namespace attribute inheritance</para> ... Then there were some postings from Terry Allen and me and Norm on the general DocBook list in response to Sabine's postings[1][2] asking for comments on RFE 145 and my related posting about adding a container for Steps in Procedure[3][4]. In one of those messages, I mentioned that the content model for Procedure allows %component.mix; to occur before Steps. Terry posted a response[5]. Though he didn't agree with me about the need for adding a container for Steps, I think he did agree there was a problem with Procedure allowing %component.mix; to occur before Steps I'm beginning to think this was a bad idea. We should not have allowed intro material within procedure, but instead have forced it to be in a containing section, ahead of the procedure. The result of what we allowed is creep toward making formal objects the equivalent of sections - which will cause unneeded complexity and inconsistency, and increase the cost of maintenance of the DTD, instances, and processing software. And in his response[6] to another message I posted[7] mentioning that I didn't think the Procedure content model should be used as a precedent for making changes to the other list content models (RFE 144), Terry wrote: RFE 144 is adding intro material to lists. I see now (though I didn't before) that this is not a good idea. But at this point I'll leave things to the Docbook TC. Norm replied[8]: Technically, we've already accepted RFE 144 so the current models of orderedlist, variablelist, calloutlist, procedure, and itemizedlist all allow: optional title optional bag of stuff one or more items Perhaps this was not the best choice, but it was the model that Procedure allowed and there's never (before) been a complaint about that aspect of procedures. And he also listed some reasons why he didn't think an additional container element for Steps was needed. I posted a message[9] in response to that, and I don't think there was any further discussions about it on the lists after that. Regards, --Mike [0]
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200103/msg00001.html [1]
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200103/msg00040.html [2]
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200103/msg00106.html [3]
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200103/msg00129.html [4]
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200103/msg00130.html [5]
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200104/msg00000.html [6]
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200104/msg00012.html [7]
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200104/msg00003.html [8]
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200104/msg00013.html [9]
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/200104/msg00016.html