Re: [docbook-apps] To Rene Hache, Larry Garfield, Bob Stayton, JirkaKosek - About a former XHTML accessiblity project

Dave Pawson wrote:
Nicolas
RAINARD wrote:
  

  

  This is why I spent a whole day to search how
I could resolve this. I used the 5.0 XSLT and it seems it processes
pretty much as the 4.x do. I had a glimpse in the XSLT2 snapshot, and I
didn't find a XHTML output in this release. Maybe is it still
automatically generated from the HTML one? I am not sure it is the best
way, for transitional HTML and strict XHTML have few things in common.
    

  
  

Rather than aiming for valid XHTML why not check your output for
accessibility, then come back with questions?
  

  

  

  

Moreover, the QandAset is rendered with definition lists
(<dl></dl>) instead of ordered lists
(<ol></ol>), which makes me puzzled...
    

  
  

What's wrong with DL? There are no accessibility issues there?
  

The use of a table within a DL is unecessary though.
  

  

  

  

Maybe am I wrong and then, could you tell me how I can get a "pure",
table-less output?
    

  
  

You need to define 'pure'.
  

You mentioned accessibility. Is that your goal? 

My goal is not only accessibility (I think these results are tolerably
well accessible). What should be a common goal is to get a semantically
correct, and elegant, output.

For example, tables should be used only to present tabular data and not
for the layout (but it seems everybody agrees with that).

Definition lists should be used to present... lists of definitions.

Here is an equivalence:

DocBook

<glossdiv>

    <glossentry>

        <glossterm>

            Definition term 1

        </glossterm>

        <glossdef>

            Definition data 1

        </glossdef>

    </glossentry>

    <glossentry>

        <glossterm>

            Definition term 2

        </glossterm>

        <glossdef>

            Definition data 2

        </glossdef>

    </glossentry>

</glossdiv>

could be transformed to:

XHTML

<dl class="glossary">

    <dt id="term01">

        Definition term 1

    </dt>

    <dd>

        Definition data 1

    </dd>

    <dt id="term02">

        Definition term 2

    </dt>

    <dd>

        Definition data 2

    </dd>

</dl>

DocBook

<qandaset>

    <qandaentry>

        <question>

            FAQ question 1

        </question>

        <answer>

            FAQ answer 1

        </answer>

    </qandaentry>

    <qandaentry>

        <question>

            FAQ question 2

        </question>

        <answer>

            FAQ answer 2

        </answer>

    </qandaentry>

</qandaset>

could be transformed to:

XHTML

<ol class="qandaset">

    <li id="qandaentry01">

        <p class="question">

    
    
    FAQ question 1

    
    </p>

    
    <p class="answer">

    
    
    FAQ answer 1

    
    </p>

    </li>

    <li id="qandaentry02">

        <p class="question">

    
    
    FAQ question 2

    
    </p>

    
    <p class="answer">

    
    
    FAQ answer 2

    
    </p>

    </li>

</ol>

As you can see, there is no more need for tables, as well as
hard-coded sections numbers, since they are automatically generated by
the browser (and it is possible to use a <ul> instead if we don't
want automatic numbering).

Of course, DocBook is much more detailed, but it is considerably easier
to strip some details than the reverse. Both DocBook and XHTML are XML
flavors and they share many semantical structures, so it should be
fairly easy to better preserve these structures. What are markups in
DocBook can be transformed as attributes in XHTML to preserve the
semantical meaning and give the required hooks for CSS presentation. In
fact, it is much easier than transforming to "old-fashioned" HTML with
tables layout.

I'll have a look at the LFS XHTML XSLT (proposed by M. Canales), and
see if they comply with such a state of mind.