RE: [docbook] need coding for "Caps/smallcaps" and "bolditalic" text

[Jeff Beal <jeff dot beal at ansys dot com>]

There's nothing in the DocBook DTD that renders by default in the
sourceforge stylesheets as small caps.  The real question here is, "Why do
you want it to be in small caps?"  If you answer that question, we can help
you to find a tag in DocBook that carries the appropriate semantic meaning,
or suggest alternative tagging methods if there isn't a tight fit.  Once you
decide how to tag it (and I strongly recommend avoiding all <emphasis
role="{text format}"/> constructs.  I wish they would remove support for
role="bold" and role="italic" from the stock XSL's at sourceforge
altogether.), you can quite easily come up with a stylesheet customization
that will render those elements in small caps.

At first, it seems to be horribly restrictive not to be able to just say, "I
want this to be in small caps, make it so!"  However, thinking closely about
the "why" question lends itself to great consistency and maintainability of
your documentation.  Imagine for a moment that a year from now, you decide
you don't want to use small caps at all, but want to use a double underline.
It would seem really silly to have <emphasis role="smallcaps"> creating a
double underline text, and going through the documentation and changing all
role="smallcaps" to role="doubleunderline" is a pain.  By marking up the why
(e.g. <varname role="static"/>) instead of the what, you avoid all sorts of
headaches down the road.

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Raju Sharma [mailto:raju@iccind.stpn.soft.net]
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2003 12:56 AM
To: docbook
Subject: [docbook] need coding for "Caps/smallcaps" and "bolditalic" text


Hello,

Is there any coding/attribute available for making text SmallCaps (sc) and
BoldItalic (both Bold as well as italic)?

I tried to use <emphasis role="smallcaps">...</emphasis> and <emphasis
role="bolditalic">...</emphasis>. But it is not working.

NOTE: After this I tried <emphasis><emphasis
role="bold">..blah...</emphasis></emphasis> for bold italic and it works. Is
this nesting of <emphasis> acceptable?


Regards
Raju
  

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: docbook-unsubscribe@lists.oasis-open.org
For additional commands, e-mail: docbook-help@lists.oasis-open.org