Re: DAVENPORT: Docbook DTD

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

/ "M.C.N. Harper" <mcnh2@hermes.cam.ac.uk> was heard to say:
| 1) Is there anyway I can influence what gets put on the ALT tag of a
| Graphic when the SGML is exported to HTML?

Depends what stylesheets your using. If you're using my DocBook DSSSL
stylesheets, there are two ways:

Image Library Files let you associate essentially arbitrary attributes
with graphics, see: http://nwalsh.com/docbook/dsssl/doc/imagelib.html

The other, more standard alternative, is to use the <mediaobject> or
<inlinemediaobject> tag with a <textobject> alternative that contains
a single <phrase>.

| 2) I need to document the menu system of a window, and I'm unclear what
| SGML structure I should use. Currently I have a system something 
| like this:
[...]
| My problem with this structure is that I think it is an incorrect use of
| the <menuchoice> tag, from my reading of the documentation, and the
| examples, which suggest that
| <menuchoice> should specify full instructions for activating the menu
| item, IE the complete...
| 
|           <menuchoice>
|             <shortcut>
|               <keycombo>
|                 <keycap>Alt</keycap>
|                 <keycap>L</keycap>
|               </keycombo>
|             </shortcut>
|             <guimenu><accel>F</accel>ile<guimenu>
|             <guimenuitem><accel>L</accel>oad</guimenuitem>
|           </menuchoice>
| 
| But that won't fit into a heirachical list, instead the result would be
| something like:
| 
| File...Load
| File...Save
| File...Quit
| Edit...Cut
| *ETC*
| 
| which isn't what I want.
| 
| So how do I sort this out?

From a purely practical standpoint, what you're doing seems
quite reasonable.  Within the context you're describing (where
File has already been activated), the menuchoice is complete.

The downside of this approach is that you won't be able to
search your document for complete menuchoices (do you relaly
care?). The "more pure" solution might be to tinker with the
stylesheets so that "File..." is suppressed in this context,
thereby allowing you to use the full selection in the menuchoice
but continue to get the presentation that you want.

                                        Cheers,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | The man with ten children is
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | better off than the one with ten
Member, DocBook Editorial Board    | thousand fonts of type, because
                                   | the man with ten children doesn't
                                   | want any more.