Re: Return of the Template Revisions, part MDMXCII

[Alexander Kirillov <kirillov math sunysb edu>]

Telsa wrote:

>Why on earth are we still using <itemisedlist>s with a word, an em
>dash and an explanation when we can use <variable> lists and the
><term> and <listitem> tags?
>
>We tend to have: 
>   <itemizedlist>
>    <listitem>
>     <para>
>       SOMEWORD &mdash; Some explanation
>
>And I don't see why we're not doing: 
>   <variablelist>
>    <varlistentry>
>     <term>SOMEWORD</term>
>     <listitem>
>      <para>
>        Some explanation
>
>I really do think that this is what <variablelist> was designed for.
>Saying "the first one uses less screen space in the finished product"
>is cheating: we won't always be using the same stylesheet, and it's
>the stylesheets fault :)

Here are my reasons: I like to have 2 kinds of list 

  a. A list in which each entry is a paragraph or two long and has a
  title (preferably on a separate line)

  b. A list in which each entry is couple of lines long and has a
  run-in (i.e., not on the separate line) title.

I use <variablelist> for a.; thus, i do not want to change the
stylesheets to make the title of <variablelist> run-in. But then,
DocBook has no tags to satisfy b. - so I make it by hand. Yes, I do
want both. I'd be happy if DocBook had 2 versions of <variablelist>,
but AFAIK, it doesn't. 

BTW, Telsa: what is the undocumented feature of gnome-terminal? I did
some work on gnome-terminal manual, and I can tell you that i
wrote there everything I knew (which is not much). I'll include this
new feature there too. 


Sasha