para — A paragraph
para ::=
(info
? db.titleforbidden.info, (text |
bridgehead
| revhistory
|
Bibliography inlines |
Error inlines | Graphic inlines | GUI inlines | Indexing inlines | Keyboard inlines | Linking inlines | Markup inlines | Math inlines | Object-oriented programming inlines
| Operating system inlines |
Product inlines | Programming inlines | Publishing inlines | Technical inlines | Ubiquitous inlines | Admonition elements | Formal elements | Graphic elements | Informal elements | List elements | Publishing elements | Synopsis elements | Technical elements | Verbatim elements)*)
A para
is a paragraph. Paragraphs in DocBook
may contain almost all inlines and most block elements. Sectioning and
higher-level structural elements are excluded. DocBook offers two
variants of paragraph: simpara
, which cannot contain
block elements, and formalpara
, which has a
title.
Some processing systems may find the presence of block elements in a paragraph difficult to handle. On the other hand, it is frequently most logical, from a structural point of view, to include block elements, especially informal block elements, in the paragraphs that describe their content. There is no easy answer to this problem.
An ordinary paragraph:
<article xmlns='http://docbook.org/ns/docbook'> <title>Example para</title> <para>The component suffered from three failings: <itemizedlist> <listitem><para>It was slow</para></listitem> <listitem><para>It ran hot</para></listitem> <listitem><para>It didn't actually work</para></listitem> </itemizedlist> Of these three, the last was probably the most important. </para> </article>
A formal paragraph:
<article xmlns='http://docbook.org/ns/docbook'> <title>Example para</title> <formalpara><title>A Test</title> <para>This is a test. This is only a test. Had this been a real example, it would have made more sense. </para> </formalpara> </article>
A simple paragraph:
<article xmlns='http://docbook.org/ns/docbook'> <title>Example para</title> <simpara> Just the text, ma'am. </simpara> </article>