Re: [xml2rfc-dev] RFC 7991 issue #38: Schema Issue, RFC 7991, In Section 2.20, <dl>

[Paul Hoffman <[e-mail]>]

On 1 Oct 2018, at 4:35, [e-mail] wrote:

> This captures an issue noted during implementation, also described in
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-levkowetz-xml2rfc-v3-implementation#section-3.1.3
>
> Specification: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7991#section-2.20
>
> ---
> In Section 2.20, <dl>
>
>    The current specification says:
>
>       "The "hanging" attribute defines whether or not the term appears on
>       the same line as the definition.  hanging="true" indicates that the
>       term is to the left of the definition, while hanging="false"
>       indicates that the term will be on a separate line."
>
>    This does not match established typographic terminology.  In typographic
>    terminology, "hanging indent" describes the case where the indentation
>    of the second and subsequent lines of a paragraph is greater than the
>    indentation of the first line.  Whether the definition in a definition
>    list starts on the first line or not has nothing to do with the presence
>    of hanging indent; our definition lists will _always_ have hanging
>    indent.
>
>    The 'hanging' attribute also describes something different from what the
>    term has been used to describe in the version 2 vocabulary.  This will
>    be confusing to users.
>
>    A more descriptive name for the attribute we're talking about would be
>    'start-definition-on-first-line', but that's unwieldy.  Maybe
>    'newline="false"' to start the definition on the first line, or
>    something like 'definition-start="first"'?
>
>    Recommendation:  Change this to a different term that is more
>                     descriptive and does not use typographically incorrect
>                     terminology.
>
>    Implementation:  The current version of xml2rfc still uses "hanging".

I like the idea of changing this to "newline" with boolean values.

--Paul Hoffman