Re: [xml2rfc-dev] RFC 7991 issue #37: Schema Issue, RFC 7991, In Section 2.12, <br>

[Henrik Levkowetz <[e-mail]>]

On 2018-10-04 08:42, Julian Reschke wrote:
> On 10/4/2018 1:48 AM, Henrik Levkowetz wrote:
>> .. >> Example, please?
>> 
>> Umm?  Take the table you pointed at, give each header cell rowspan="2",
>> except the cell(s) where you want a particular line break, and put the
>> first part in the first cell and the second part in the second cell.
> 
> That would require the table style to have little margins and no 
> horizontal lines.

Of course.  I said in the first release of the text formatter that the
current added horizontal lines would go away; they were there teporarily
to aid debugging of rowspan.

> (the lack of table styling features is another issue).

Agreed.

>> ... >> In the past, we have worked around that by using non-breaking spaces
>>> where we want to keep things together. I doubt that the same approach
>>> would work well in narrow table cells...
>> 
>> Why not?  There's no mathematical difference between the two cases.
> 
> Because then you'd get overflows when the cell gets narrower than the 
> longest character sequence that can't be broken. This is not an issue 
> for the doc title, because it has lots of room.

I think that in that case, you'd be getting a break at the point you'd
want without the insertion of a <br>.  It's definitely not the case for
the example you gave earlier; that can be handled just as well with the
use of non-breaking space.

However:

  1) would you agree that the use of non-breaking space would be a
     workaround, rather than a proper solution for document and
     section titles, as well as for table cells?

  2) <br> makes it much more convenient to get the desired layout in
     cells than using rowspan and cell-splitting?

  3) <br> would be better than the use of artwork in order to write
     RFC 1605, and probably other April 1st RFCs, too?

  4) Disallowing <br> in all cases except for table cells requires
     (repeatedly, to new author after new author), explaining that an
     obvious usage of an obvious element is forbidden in so-and-so
     case?

All in all, what do we really loose by permitting <br> more generally?

I certainly believe it would make life easier for a lot of authors, and
for the people who would not have to explain again and again why a draft
author cannot use <br> in _that_ particular title or text.



Best regards,

	Henrik