Re: [Docutils-develop] Forcing line breaks

[Adam C. <ad...@ch...>]

On Fri, 06 Sep 2002 20:11:44 -0400 David Goodger
<go...@us...> wrote:

> > Is there any way to force line breaks? Example of usage::
> > 
> >   :Name:    Adam Chodorowski
> >   :Address: The Street
> >             11111 The Town
> >             The Country
> >   :Phone:   +11-111111
> 
> If you're using a recent snapshot, it's already taken care of for you.
> The "Address" field should produce the equivalent of a line_block
> element, which is exactly what you describe.

I'm guessing that is only valid for a bibliographic fields...

> I suspect that this is a document *fragment* you're showing us though.

Exactly, although that snippet I gave you actually *is* part of a
bibliographic field list I would like the functionality in other places as
well.

> In that case,
> 
> - You shouldn't really be using field lists in the first place.
>   They're for extension syntax (docinfo & directive options).  I'll
>   make this more explicit in the docs.  Perhaps a table or a
>   definition list would be better?

I disagree strongly on this. Why on earth shouldn't fields lists be usable as
a construct of their own? Using a table to show contact information is ugly
and non-intuitive (if you only have contact information for one person; if you
have many it does makes sense), using a bulleted/numbered list is definately
not apropriate and a definition list doesn't really fit either.

Definition lists do fit *conceptually*, but unfortunately not with regard to
presentation. When you specify contact information or similar data, you almost
always do it like this::

  Name:    Adam Chodorowski
  Address: The Street 42
           11111 The City
  Country: Sweden
  Phone:   +46-8-1111111

Having definition lists is *not* intuitive for the reader, since it results in
(atleast for HTML)::

  Name:
     Adam Chodorowski

  Address:
     The Street 42
     11111 The City

  Country:
     Sweden

  Phone:
     +46-8-1111111

Not to mention that it takes more space, nobody excepts contact information to
be presented that way. Field lists are IMHO perfect for "single vertical table
rows". Just what the doctor ordered. ;-)

[...]
> > I looked through the documentation, but couldn't find any mention
> > of it...
> 
> http://docutils.sf.net/spec/rst/directives.html#line-block

That's exactly what I need, thanks. :-)

---
Adam Chodorowski <ad...@ch...>

If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?