🚀 go-pugleaf

Well, three replies: and both extremes plus the middle of the spectrum equally represented I see.

I can't seem to find the middle of the spectrum myself though: here's an example of the frustration that lay behind this question.

Our documents can nest lists, of various types, to arbitrary levels. Obviously we need different numbering sequences for different depths, and increasing indents for increasing depths, but fundamentally a list item is the same shape wherever it is, whether numbered or bulleted or not, whether six levels deep or at the top of the first page.

The voluminous SADG contains an example which I thought was very helpful: specifying a simple left indent change on a "list" container, which would be inherited by list items - and more usefully by any other elements contained within them (including other lower-level lists). Thus one formatting adjustment on one element in the EDD is powerful enough to generate the full range of indents required by all varieties and levels of list. Brilliant! The only problem - discovered far too many hours later after testing my powers of comprehension and self-examination to the full - is that EDD-based formatting instructions are totally ignored if a paragraph format is referred to by a subordinate element. If a third-level list item includes a "paragraph" then sadly the indent specified in the format for that paragraph takes precedence. Even if it's empty: there is no "as is" in paragraph formats. In our situation - where list items have few restrictions on content - it seems that we have an all-or-nothing choice. And this is just indents; we have the same hassles with tab locations and line depths and so on.

Why - when character formats use "as is" - do paragraph formats not have the same flexibility? That would enable so much simplification - a smallish catalog and a smallish EDD, instead of a huge catalog or a huge EDD. The middle way would become feasible!

Thanks for listening :-)

Cheers
T