[NeXus-committee] Formatting the NeXus Reference: Unified nested list

[Pete Jemian]

Don't declare victory on the page count yet.  This is still a work in 
progress and that can change when lists like this one are rendered as lists:

As shown:
   -:- Any of these value(s): * Soller: * radial: * oscillating: * 
honeycomb:

As a list:
   Any of these value:

   * Soller
   * radial
   * oscillating
   * honeycomb

On 8/20/2014 6:33 AM, Joachim Wuttke wrote:
> - It removes lots of redundancy, and thereby makes the docs
>    clearer, more readable, and much shorter. The PDF book will
>    shrink from 390 pages to approx. 290 pages!

Other situations such as in the description of NXcollection, the two 
paragraphs have been merged.

These situations are where the page count will grow again.

A dictionary-style view of the NXDL (such as the one you show) was 
created in an earlier stage of the DocBook-formatted Reference 
Documentation but later changed into the table view.  The table view of 
the NXDL classes was formed to reduce the white space in the document 
yet show the structure as clearly as possible.  Two major disadvantages 
of the table view are quite clear:

* limited space for the description
* difficult to show hierarchy (common to application definitions)

If a table representation is to be used, a columnspan could be the way 
to show the description.  Perhaps some table nesting (as in the recent 
figure additions to the RSI manuscript draft) could embed the hierarchy.

Pete