optional

optional — Optional information

Synopsis

Content Model

optional ::=

Zero or more of:
- text
- alt
- anchor
- annotation
- biblioref
- indexterm (db.indexterm.endofrange)
- indexterm (db.indexterm.singular)
- indexterm (db.indexterm.startofrange)
- inlinemediaobject
- link
- olink
- phrase (db._phrase)
- remark
- replaceable
- subscript
- superscript
- xref

Attributes

Common attributes and common linking attributes.

Description

The Optional element indicates that a specified argument, option, or other text is optional. The precise meaning of “optional” varies according to the application or process begin documented.

Processing expectations

Formatted inline.

Optional arguments in a Synopsis are usually given special typographic treatment, often they are surrounded by square brackets. The Optional tag is expected to generate the brackets.

Outside a Synopsis, the typographic treatment of Optional is application-specific.

Parents

These elements contain optional: bridgehead, citation, citetitle, classsynopsisinfo, computeroutput, emphasis (db.emphasis), entry, firstterm, funcsynopsisinfo, glosssee, glossseealso, glossterm, html:button, html:label, html:legend, link, literallayout, member, olink, orgdiv, para, phrase (db.phrase), primary, primaryie, programlisting, quote, refdescriptor, refentrytitle, refname, refpurpose, screen, secondary, secondaryie, see, seealso, seealsoie, seeie, seg, segtitle, simpara, subtitle, synopsis, td, term, termdef, tertiary, tertiaryie, th, title, titleabbrev, tocentry, userinput.

Children

The following elements occur in optional: text, alt, anchor, annotation, biblioref, indexterm (db.indexterm.endofrange), indexterm (db.indexterm.singular), indexterm (db.indexterm.startofrange), inlinemediaobject, link, olink, phrase (db._phrase), remark, replaceable, subscript, superscript, xref.

Examples

<article xmlns='http://docbook.org/ns/docbook'>
<title>Example optional</title>

<synopsis>
ls <option>-abcCdfFgilLmnopqrRstux1</option>
   <optional>names</optional>
</synopsis>

</article>

ls -abcCdfFgilLmnopqrRstux1
   [names]

ChangeLog

This alpha reference page is $Revision: 1.4 $ published $Date: 2005/10/31 12:31:55 $.


oointerface		option