Introduction to Mallard

Block elements

About

There are two types of block elements in Mallard: basic and formal. Basic block elements include paragraphs, code and interactive shell blocks, media, and examples.

Formal block elements, such as quotes, comments, figures, listings, and notes, can include a title element before the block element content. Some of the formal block elements may also contain descriptions and citations.

Some basic block elements can be inside a formal block element. For example, you can make media elements more prominent by putting them inside a <figure> block. In the example below, the basic block element <code> is inside the formal block element <listing>. Note that the <listing> block includes a title and a description before the <code> block. The <title> element contains a <file> inline element specifying a file name: inline elements will be covered in the next part of this book. 

Example

<listing>
  <title><file>index.page</file></title>
  <desc>A first Mallard page</desc>
<code><![CDATA[ <page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/" type="guide" id="index"> <!-- Content goes here --> </page>]]></code>
</listing>

Learn more

For more on block elements, see the Mallard specification on block elements at http://projectmallard.org/1.0/mal_block