[pmwiki-users] Definition Lists

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud at pobox.com
Mon Jun 20 09:30:29 CDT 2005


On Mon, Jun 20, 2005 at 10:09:10AM +0100, Hans wrote:
> could we have a markup which produces
> <ul>
>    <li><dl><dt> term </dt><dd> definition </dd></dl></li>
>    <li><dl><dt> term </dt><dd> definition </dd></dl></li>
>    <li><dl><dt> term </dt><dd> definition </dd></dl></li>
>    etc.
> </ul>

Well, better might be

    <dl>
       <dt><dl><dt> term </dt><dd> definition </dd></dl></dt>
       <dt><dl><dt> term </dt><dd> definition </dd></dl></dt>
       <dt><dl><dt> term </dt><dd> definition </dd></dl></dt>
       etc.
    </dl>

so we don't get (or have to style) the ul bullets, and to keep
things as definition lists.  But ...

> The markup should be similarly simple as : term : definition,
> perhaps :: term :: definition to indicate the more complex form.

I think this markup suffers from being simultaneously too general
and too specific.  It's too general because it tries to solve a
generic "how do I wrap entire definitions" without really solving
any of them -- it still needs something to indicate that we want
the leading dots.  It's too specific because it seems to apply
only to the one special case we've come up with in the past day.

In reality, if one wants to generate lines with leading dots, 
then the markup ought to be something like leading dots 
(probably any sequence of four or more dots):

    title ............... text
    another title ....... more text
    still more .......... still more text

This could then be turned into a table or definition list with
the appropriate stylings.

Pm



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