Re: questions about (docbook) formatting

[Karl Berry]

    * I think that index entries (like @cindex ..) should not open a
      paragraph if there is no paragraph opened

I think that too.

    * When some text appears before the first @item in @*table, @mutitable,
      @itemize, @enumerate, it is not said in the texinfo manual how this
      text will be interpreted.

I've never known how to usefully define it.
I'd say, feel free implement whatever is easy.

      In docbook it seems to me that it is considered as the title of the
      construct, and no paragraph is opened. Should this be considered
      a texinfo language feature?

No -- such text is not formatted as any kind of title by texinfo.tex
now.  (It just comes out as regular text.)

    * In @*table, it seems to me that the interpretation of constructs like
      @item a
      @cindex index
      @itemx b
      
      Text.

In general, all we can say is that there are two items and one index
entry.  We cannot say if the index entry "belongs" to either of them.

The one thing that we know for sure is that "Text" belongs to both
items.  Does the Docbook DTD have a concept of this kind of list?  Or
does 
@item a
@itemx 
Text.
have to turn into whatever docbook calls the HTML

<dt>a</dt>
<dd></dd>

<dt>b</dt>
<dd>Text.</dd>

?

    However in docbook the varlistentry is (term+ , listitem),

You mean, in the actual Docbook definition or just in what makeinfo does?
Whatever makeinfo does is not very important.

I'm not sure what our options are.

    * This is a docbook only issue. In docbook elements mapped from
    @def* (at least in <function>) the only allowed elements seemsto be
    <replaceable> and <type>. And <replaceable> (haven't looked at type,
    but I guess it is the same) doesn't seem to accept any style
    command. So I think that the best would be to keep the detection of
    replaceable/type/delimiter as it is now, output delimiters as is,
    and remove any command in <type> and <replaceable>, to produce some
    text formatted in the same way than text appearing in attributes
    (most commands removed, entities accepted, some formatting possible,
    but without any <element>).

    Does it seems right?

As far as I can follow it, yes.  Seems like the best we can do given the
limitations of the Docbook DTD?

Thanks,
Karl