Some questions about mallard

Hi,

On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 5:55 PM, Shaun McCance <shaunm at gnome.org> wrote:
> The decision to not mix block and inline is a very old one, from
> before this list existed, probably from before projectmallard.org
> existed. It was entirely my decision. On the whole, I still think
> it makes things simpler, even though it leads to some annoyance
> with the td and item elements.

I have to agree that mixing text and sub-elements sounds bad, I
thought it was possible to allow either one or the other, exclusively.
As it turns out, it had been a long time since I last looked at what
XML schema can do and while mixing text and child element is possible,
having text child only in absence of sub elements seems impossible.

> Phil proposed convenience elements to gnome-doc-list in 2009:
>
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-doc-list/2009-September/msg00033.html
>
> The idea (for the item element) is to have a separate element
> (he called it li) that effectively means <item><p>. So these
> would be equivalent under his proposal:
>
> <item><p>This is an item.</p></item>
> <li>This is an item.</li>
>
> If you want multiple blocks in an item, you'd have to use the
> item element. Otherwise, li is fine. A similar solution could
> be done for td.
>
> I made a different proposal at some point, though I can't find it
> in my list archives. Basically, I proposed letting the p element
> just *be* an item or td element. So this would be the shorthand
> syntax for a list:
>
> <list>
>  <p>First item</p>
>  <p>Second item</p>
> </list>
>
[...]
>
> Both solutions feel a bit hacky to me. I like my solution slightly
> better, if only because I cringe at every new element name. Neither
> of them were met with great enthusiasm, so they didn't happen for
> Mallard 1.0. Either could still be on the table for future versions,
> if people want.

Both do seem hacky indeed. While I do love the low number of elements
in mallard, using <p> directly as you propose seems more hackish to
me.
Introducing shorthands like <li> sounds nice, especially if I am not
the only one complaining :-)

Unfortunately, it means at least two more elements, as loosing colspan
would be a bad side effect. <li> has the advantage of being used
elsewhere. <td> would be a natural choice for table cells if mallard
where using something else, in the current state it would mean that
for lists the shorthand feels closer to html and for tables the
shorthand derives from html, unfortunate :/
If we do switch to mallard, we will live with it, now that we have
some explanations.

Any comment on the bibliography part of my previous message? Even if
it does not requires changes in mallard itself, having some discussion
and a list of style hints for this encouraged upstream would be great.

Thanks!

-- 
Aurélien Naldi