Re: Idea for simpler lists and tables

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Tue, 2010-01-05 at 12:40 -0600, Jim Campbell wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 11:00 PM, Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>
> wrote:

[snip]
> 
> Initially, looking at something like this seemed pretty cumbersome to
> me:
> 
> <list>
>  <item><p>One</p></item>
>  <item><p>Two</p></item>
>  <item><p>Three</p></item>
> </list>
> 
> In practice, though, it hasn't been much of a hindrance to me.  Once I
> knew that this is how I set up a list, it has been easy to remember,
> and easy enough to use.  I normally just copy and paste from one list
> to another as a starting point anyway.

Sure, it's a mild annoyance that we all learn to deal with.
It's certainly not a major roadblock.  But a lot of people
do ask about it when they're first learning.  So I have to
assume that, while it might be a mild annoyance, it's a
widespread mild annoyance.
> 
> You reference lists here, but steps are done in the same way.  If you
> made this particular change, would <step> (or other such syntax
> elements) also be affected?

I would do this for list and steps.  They have the same
basic content model.  The only way I can really think of
with terms is to eschew wrapper elements entirely, using
title like HTML's dt and any block content like HTML's
dd.  I think that gets really ugly, so I don't want to
go down that route.  And there's nothing we can do with
tree, because its content model is already so special.

It's not inconceivable to do it with tables as well.

<table>
<tr>
  <p>First column</p>
  <p>Second column</p>
  <p>Third column</p>
</tr>
</table>

But I'm not sure how badly this would affect stuff like
the column grouping and shading code.  I'd have to look
at the implementation difficulties before I commit to
simplified tables.
> 
> Part of me thinks, "Will this cause problems with xslt processing or
> other stuff that we might be considering yet?" but other part thinks
> that if Mallard's goal is to make authoring simpler (more
> simple?) . . .  such a change would be good.

Well, obviously, I can't fully predict every tool that
could be written, and how this would affect it.  If we
had graphical editors, I wouldn't be surprised if they
needed to normalize lists to always use item elements.

But I am a tool developer, and one of Mallard's design
goals is to be easy on tool developers.  I generally
don't propose features that I think are too difficult
for implementations.

(I'm idly wondering if we should have a process for
proposing, discussing, and deciding on new features.
Something like Python PEPs.)


-- 
Shaun McCance
http://syllogist.net/