DOCBOOK-APPS: Variable Lists should be formatted as fo:block ratherthan fo:list

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo at metalab dot unc dot edu>]

The XSL stylesheets 1.4.0 for Formatting Objects treat the variablelist 
in a very strange fashion. They use a fo:list where the term becomes a 
fo:list-item-label and the listitem becomes a fo:list-item-body. The 
effect is that the entire thing looks like a two column table in which 
the left hand column is way too small. Not very aesthetically pleasing.

The HTML stylesheets just translate this all to a definition list which 
looks much better; e.g.

term1
   data data adata data
   data data adata data
   data data adata data

term2
   data data adata data
   data data adata data
   data data adata data

I suggest that the FO style sheets do this too. You just need to use 
blocks with the appropriate indenting rather than trying to convert it 
to some kind of list. I've already made the changes in my own driver 
stylesheet. Here's what I use, though you probably don't want to use
these verbatim because I haven't yet quite figured out how all the 
stylesheets are organized:

   <xsl:template match="variablelist">
     <xsl:variable name="id">
       <xsl:call-template name="object.id"/>
     </xsl:variable>

     <xsl:if test="title">
       <xsl:apply-templates select="title" mode="list.title.mode"/>
     </xsl:if>

     <xsl:apply-templates/>

   </xsl:template>

   <xsl:template match="varlistentry">
     <xsl:variable name="id"><xsl:call-template 
name="object.id"/></xsl:variable>
     <fo:block id="{$id}" xsl:use-attribute-sets="normal.para.spacing">
       <fo:block>
         <xsl:apply-templates select="term"/>
       </fo:block>
       <fo:block start-indent="0.5in">
         <xsl:apply-templates select="listitem"/>
       </fo:block>
     </fo:block>
   </xsl:template>

-- 
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|               Java I/O (O'Reilly & Associates, 1999)               |
|            http://metalab.unc.edu/javafaq/books/javaio/            |
|   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1565924851/cafeaulaitA/   |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://metalab.unc.edu/javafaq/ |
|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://metalab.unc.edu/xml/     |
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