| DocBook: The Definitive Guide Version 2.0.8 (Alpha)

# section

$Revision: 1.3 $

$Date: 2002/06/12 11:18:35 $

section — A recursive section

## Synopsis

### Content Model

    section ::=
    (sectioninfo?,
     (title,subtitle?,titleabbrev?),
     (toc|lot|index|glossary|bibliography)*,
     (((calloutlist|glosslist|itemizedlist|orderedlist|segmentedlist|
        simplelist|variablelist|caution|important|note|tip|warning|
        literallayout|programlisting|programlistingco|screen|screenco|
        screenshot|synopsis|cmdsynopsis|funcsynopsis|classsynopsis|
        fieldsynopsis|constructorsynopsis|destructorsynopsis|
        methodsynopsis|formalpara|para|simpara|address|blockquote|
        graphic|graphicco|mediaobject|mediaobjectco|informalequation|
        informalexample|informalfigure|informaltable|equation|example|
        figure|table|msgset|procedure|sidebar|qandaset|productionset|
        constraintdef|anchor|bridgehead|remark|highlights|abstract|
        authorblurb|epigraph|indexterm|beginpage)+,
       ((refentry)*|
        (section)*|
        simplesect*))|
      (refentry)+|
      (section)+|
      simplesect+),
     (toc|lot|index|glossary|bibliography)*)

### Attributes

Common attributes

Name | Type | Default
status | CDATA | None
label | CDATA | None

## Description

`Section` is one of the top-level sectioning elements in a component. There are three types of sectioning elements in DocBook:

- Explicitly numbered sections, `Sect1`…`Sect5`, which must be properly nested and can only be five levels deep.

- Recursive `Section`s, which are an alternative to the numbered sections and have unbounded depth.

- `SimpleSect`s, which are terminal. `SimpleSect`s can occur as the “leaf” sections in either recursive sections or any of the numbered sections, or directly in components.

`Section`s may be more convenient than numbered sections in some authoring environments because they can be moved around in the document hierarchy without renaming.

None of the sectioning elements is allowed to “float” in a component. You can place paragraphs and other block elements before a section, but you cannot place anything after it.

### Processing expectations

Formatted as a displayed block. Sometimes sections are numbered.

Use of deeply nested `Section`s may cause problems in some processing systems.

### Parents

These elements contain section: `appendix`, `article`, `chapter`, `partintro`, `preface`, `section`.

### Children

The following elements occur in section: `abstract`, `address`, `anchor`, `authorblurb`, `beginpage`, `bibliography`, `blockquote`, `bridgehead`, `calloutlist`, `caution`, `classsynopsis`, `cmdsynopsis`, `constraintdef`, `constructorsynopsis`, `destructorsynopsis`, `epigraph`, `equation`, `example`, `fieldsynopsis`, `figure`, `formalpara`, `funcsynopsis`, `glossary`, `glosslist`, `graphic`, `graphicco`, `highlights`, `important`, `index`, `indexterm`, `informalequation`, `informalexample`, `informalfigure`, `informaltable`, `itemizedlist`, `literallayout`, `lot`, `mediaobject`, `mediaobjectco`, `methodsynopsis`, `msgset`, `note`, `orderedlist`, `para`, `procedure`, `productionset`, `programlisting`, `programlistingco`, `qandaset`, `refentry`, `remark`, `screen`, `screenco`, `screenshot`, `section`, `sectioninfo`, `segmentedlist`, `sidebar`, `simpara`, `simplelist`, `simplesect`, `subtitle`, `synopsis`, `table`, `tip`, `title`, `titleabbrev`, `toc`, `variablelist`, `warning`.

## Attributes

label

  `Label` specifies an identifying string for presentation purposes.

  Generally, an explicit `Label` attribute is used only if the processing system is incapable of generating the label automatically. If present, the `Label` is normative; it will used even if the processing system is capable of automatic labelling.

status

  `Status` identifies the editorial or publication status of the `Section`.

  Publication status might be used to control formatting (for example, printing a “draft” watermark on drafts) or processing (perhaps a document with a status of “final” should not include any components that are not final).

## See Also

`bridgehead`, `sect1`, `sect2`, `sect3`, `sect4`, `sect5`, `simplesect`.

## Examples

    <!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN"
              "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd">
    <chapter><title>Test Chapter</title>
    <para>This chapter uses recursive sections.</para>
    <section>
    <sectioninfo>
    <abstract><para>A trivial example of recursive sections.</para>
    </abstract>
    </sectioninfo>
    <title>Like a Sect1</title>
    <subtitle>Or How I Learned to Let Go of Enumeration
    and Love to Recurse</subtitle>
    <para>This section is like a Sect1.</para>
    <section><title>Like a Sect2</title>
    <para>This section is like a Sect2.</para>
    <section><title>Like a Sect3</title>
    <para>This section is like a Sect3.</para>
    <section><title>Like a Sect4</title>
    <para>This section is like a Sect4.</para>
    <section><title>Like a Sect5</title>
    <para>This section is like a Sect5.</para>
    <section><title>Would be like a Sect6</title>
    <para>This section would be like a Sect6, if there was one.</para>
    <section><title>Would be like a Sect7</title>
    <para>This section would be like a Sect7, if there was one.</para>
    </section>
    </section>
    </section>
    </section>
    </section>
    </section>
    </section>
    </chapter>

For additional examples, see also `html-form`.

sect5info |  | sectioninfo

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