Lots of duplicate code in docbook

[Daniel]

On 2022-04-01 04:44, Thibaut Cuvelier wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Mar 2022 at 07:29, Daniel <xracoonx at gmx.de 
> <mailto:xracoonx at gmx.de>> wrote:
> 
>     On 2022-03-28 18:49, Thibaut Cuvelier wrote:
>      > On Mon, 21 Mar 2022 at 13:11, Lorenzo Bertini
>      > <lorenzobertini97 at gmail.com <mailto:lorenzobertini97 at gmail.com>
>     <mailto:lorenzobertini97 at gmail.com
>     <mailto:lorenzobertini97 at gmail.com>>> wrote:
>      >
>      >     Il 21/03/22 11:49, Daniel ha scritto:
>      >      > On 2022-03-21 10:55, Lorenzo Bertini wrote:
>      >      >> There is some degree of duplication between Docbook and
>     LyXHTML
>      >     code.
>      >      >> I think its because the latter is much older and Thibaut
>     had to
>      >     write
>      >      >> its own to produce Docbook. This has been brought up also
>     when
>      >      >> addressing MathML production. I agree LyX needs more
>     standard XML
>      >      >> generating functions.
>      >      >>
>      >      >> Its part of a larger theme about XML production, and
>     there was a
>      >     talk
>      >      >> sometime ago about using a library for this.
>      >      >
>      >      > I might be misunderstanding your comment. But actually, I
>     wanted to
>      >      > point not to the way XML is generated but more to the actual
>      >     content,
>      >      > for example, the specific attributes of an element which
>     seem to be
>      >      > duplicated. But maybe that problem is somehow dependent on the
>      >     general
>      >      > generation of XML?
>      >
>      >     Sorry, I meant that code duplication is probably due to the
>     different
>      >     maintainers for the two formats and the fact that one is much
>     older and
>      >     has been untouched for a long (LyXHTML). I remember Thibaut
>     saying he
>      >     branched from LyXHTML knowingly, even if it would have meant
>     rewriting
>      >     some stuff. Looking at your examples, this might be the case.
>      >
>      >     I think a common interface to write XML elements like tables,
>     tags,
>      >     etc,
>      >     would help reduce this, but it will be a lot of effort. I'll
>     wait for
>      >     Thibaut and Richard to chime in on this.
>      >
>      >
>      > There is already a generic interface for XML tags (but not
>      > tree-oriented, like almost all XML tools). However, it does not make
>      > sense to have a generic function for a table: CALS and HTML are two
>      > quite different formats; moreover, HTML tables in DocBook do not
>     always
>      > exactly match what HTML allows (mostly, HTML allows CSS, but DocBook
>      > forbids formatting).
> 
>     Okay. As I said, I have no knowledge about DocBook. I was working on
>     adding support for line styles to LyXHTML and noticed that it felt
>     strange to work with the code when very similar code appeared in the
>     DocBook section.
> 
>     DocBook does not support CSS Styles?  Well, at least what I added does
>     not need to be duplicated for DocBook then. But what is
> 
>     style
> 
>           This attribute specifies style information for the current
>     element.
> 
>     (https://tdg.docbook.org/tdg/5.0/html.td.html
>     <https://tdg.docbook.org/tdg/5.0/html.td.html>)?
> 
> 
> You're right, td has a style attribute (it's quite exceptional in DocBook).
> 
> I've merged a lot of code between HTML and DocBook for lines in the last 
> three commits (c7896cf9, ec016162, 0ba1b68f). The codes for DocBook and 
> XHTML are harder to merge, I believe it's more open to discussion, hence 
> I'm attaching a patch to this email to gather feedback. I could go 
> further, but the main codes (::docbook and ::xhtml) differ more in their 
> preamble, I'd rather do that in a second step, after having some 
> feedback for the first one.

Thanks. As I said, I have no idea about docbook, but I guess others can 
provide more valuable feedback. But did you happen to check whether it 
conflicts with my patch? (https://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/10154#comment:10)

Daniel