Re: [PATCH] Documentation: use "spurious .sp" XSLT if DOCBOOK_SUPPRESS_SP is set

On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 07:19:08AM -0500, Chris Johnsen wrote:

quoted

In the course of your SVN research, did you find the fixes between
1.73.1 and 1.74.3 that fixed the spacing issue? If so, I wonder if it's
worth backporting that fix to DOCBOOK_FIX_LIST_SPACING.

I guess you are referring to an issue different from the one created by 
using the "spurious .sp" simpara template, but I am not familiar with 
another one. If not, then I am confused. The new patch to avoid using the 
"spurious .sp" template fixes the list spacing in pu's git-cvsimport.1 
when I generate it here (using docbook-xsl 1.74.0). For example, the extra 
blank line after "Problems related to timestamps:" goes away and a new 
blank line is inserted before "Problems related to branches:".

Sorry, I should have been more clear (it seems we have enough docbook
problems to cause confusion in referring to them :) ).  What I meant is:

  The original issue which caused me to investigate this, namely the
  extra blank line before a list and the missing blank line after the
  list, is present in 1.73 but not in 1.74 (I tested only with 1.74.3,
  but your statement above leads me to believe it is fixed in 1.74.0).

  Is it worth including a fix in our docbook templates to make it look
  right for people on 1.73?

My poking around in the docbook SVN repo was largely limited to the  
manpages/block.xsl file since that is where the normal simpara template 
lives. If this other issue is list specific, it seems likely that fixes 
would be in manpages/lists.xsl. It looks like there have only been around 
ten commits to that lists.xsl since 1.73.1, but none of them jumped out at 
me as likely culprits unless the spacing you mean is indentation or 
"bullet"-to-text spacing (though my brain is tired right now).

Hmm. I think part of the fix is actually in param.xsl, which contains:

    <!-- * squeeze multiple .sp instances into a single .sp-->
    <substitution oldstring=".sp&#10;.sp" newstring=".sp"/>

in 1.74, but not 1.73.

I am torn on whether it makes sense to try backporting this. Debian
stable, at least, will be on 1.73 for quite a long time. On the other
hand, the problem is relatively minor (it is ugly, but you can still
read the text) and I'm not sure we want to get into pulling random fixes
from upstream docbook-xsl; it could turn into a huge time sink.

-Peff