[rfc-i] draft-iab-xml2rfc-02 - alignment of sourcecode

[jhildebr at cisco.com (Joe Hildebrand (jhildebr))]

PaulK, I'm going to send you a message off-list to coordinate a time to talk, gather examples, see how those work in my prototype v3 tooling, and discuss the output.  I will summarize our findings back to the list afterward.

-- 
Joe Hildebrand







On 2/4/16, 10:05 AM, "rfc-interest on behalf of Paul Kyzivat" <rfc-interest-bounces at rfc-editor.org on behalf of pkyzivat at alum.mit.edu> wrote:

>On 2/4/16 9:50 AM, Paul Hoffman wrote:
>> On 3 Feb 2016, at 21:07, Paul Kyzivat wrote:
>>
>>> On 2/3/16 5:47 PM, Joe Hildebrand (jhildebr) wrote:
>>>> On 2/2/16, 3:17 PM, "rfc-interest on behalf of Julian Reschke"
>>>> <rfc-interest-bounces at rfc-editor.org on behalf of
>>>> julian.reschke at gmx.de> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> It depends on what the formatter does with the indentation information.
>>>>>
>>>>> In any format other than plain text, it can easily style the actual
>>>>> code
>>>>> so that it's clear what's indentation and what's content.
>>>>>
>>>>> See, for instance:
>>>>> <http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc7230.html#rfc.section.2.1.p.8>
>>>>
>>>> What I don't understand yet is why you would want to indent different
>>>> sourcecode elements differently from one another.  Without more
>>>> explanation, your example above looks to me like a perfectly valid
>>>> approach for all of your sourcecode elements to be styled that way. I
>>>> see the x:indent-with="  " in the XML source, but I don't see how
>>>> that affected the HTML, which has <pre class="text">?  Can you please
>>>> walk me through your vision?
>>>
>>> When it fits, I am likely to want the soucecode indentation to float
>>> with the indentation of the text that surrounds it. But I may want to
>>> override that if it doesn't fit well that way.
>>
>> Again, the question is what value this floating has. Are you thinking
>> only of the text-only output (as compared to the HTML and PDF that are
>> likely to be much more widely used)?
>
>I have not looked at any generated html or pdf. (Only HTMLized txt 
>output.) So I don't know what that might look like for source code.
>
>Can you point me to a sample document containing sourcecode that has 
>been formatted in HTML or PDF? (Preferably one that has an assortment of 
>different languages in sourcecode - e.g., ABNF, XML, Java.) And with 
>sourcecode within sections at different nesting levels.
>
>>> OR, I may want to treat it as a block and apply exactly the same
>>> alignment controls that are available for artwork. (And if the
>>> sourcecode lines are kind of long, then "right" alignment might be my
>>> preferred choice - to get it indented as much as I can while not
>>> truncating anything.)
>>>
>>> Which way is a matter of taste.
>>>
>>> Right now I get neither option.
>>
>> Correct. It was a conscious decision to remove formatter hints
>> throughout the design other than for things that are clearly artwork.
>> The text in RFCs (as compared to say, books) has strong semantic
>> meaning, and having the output of different RFCs look different because
>> of different authors' visual preferences will make them harder to
>> understand for the intended readership.
>
>It is one thing to remove hints for stuff that the formatter will act 
>intelligently on. But sourcecode effectively *is* artwork as far as the 
>formatter is concerned, in that it not reflowed or indented in any way, 
>and depends on leading whitespace in the input for all indenting.
>
>While other options would be helpful, admitting that it is analogous to 
>artwork, and allowing the same hints as for artwork, would be an 
>improvement.
>
>I might have a different opinion if I thought the formatters would have 
>language-specific pretty-printers. Maybe there should be a "prettyprint" 
>option.
>
>	Thanks,
>	Paul
>
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