Description

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.

See Also

formalpara, simpara

Examples

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>