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Re: Description lists in PDF using LI, Lbl and LBody

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From: Duff Johnson
Date: Jul 7, 2021 12:09PM

> Many years ago Duff Johnson had written an article on considering use of PDF list semantics for description lists (e.g. akin to the DL element in HTML).
> http://duff-johnson.com/articles/lists-contrasting-html-with-pdf/ I wanted to get people's thought on using the Lbl and LBody within a LI list item for data pairs as labels and values, etc. I've noted that when I run an example which users words in the Lbl PAC 3 seems to flag it as potentially a misuse of the structure. Thoughts? Is this a good or bad implementation?

The respective specifications (PDF 1.7 and PDF 2.0) are clear that Lbl elements may contain text, so I'm not sure that I understand why there would be a warning. That said I've not looked closely at how this implementation deals with this issue.

> An example might be a word and definition or a data pair such as "Median house price" in the lbl and the cost in $ in the LBody.

PDF's model for lists clearly encompasses this use case.

> It doesn't feel right to me. As Duff said in his article, the <Lbl> tag is intended to specify the semantics of the list, not contain data.

To be clear, the article doesn't suggest (certainly not intentionally!) that Lbl structure elements in PDF should not contain data… just that the contents of the Lbl tag don't determine the list's semantic structure.

Duff.