Possibly invalid test: definition-list.docx

[StephanMeijer]

Explain the problem.

I have observed that in the word/document.xml file of the definition_list.docx test document — available at test/docx/definition_list.docx and test/docx/golden/definition_list.docx — some paragraphs have two styles applied simultaneously. This is illustrated in the following snippet:

According to the OOXML standard (ECMA-376), a paragraph should have only one style defined via the <w:pStyle>element within its properties. The standard does not indicate, suggest, or provide examples where multiple styles are applied directly to a single paragraph.

This raises a concern that the definition_list.docx file may be invalid per the OOXML specification due to multiple styles being assigned to a single paragraph.

Microsoft Word interprets this paragraph to be of style "SourceCode", not "Definition" as illustrated in the following screenshot:

Pandoc version?
Latest.

[StephanMeijer]

This could be a valid replacement: definition_list.docx

[jgm]

Interesting:

 % pandoc -f native -t docx | pandoc -f docx -t native
[ DefinitionList
    [ ( [ Str "term1" ]
      , [ [ Para [ Str "definition" , Space , Str "1" ]
          , CodeBlock ( "" , [ "hs" ] , [] ) "-- haskell code"
          ]
        ]
      )
    , ( [ Str "term2" ]
      , [ [ Para [ Str "definition" , Space , Str "2" ] ] ]
      )
    ]
]
^D
[ DefinitionList
    [ ( [ Str "term1" ]
      , [ [ Para [ Str "definition" , Space , Str "1" ] ] ]
      )
    ]
, CodeBlock ( "" , [] , [] ) "-- haskell code"
, DefinitionList
    [ ( [ Str "term2" ]
      , [ [ Para [ Str "definition" , Space , Str "2" ] ] ]
      )
    ]
]

A definition list with a code block in the definition won't survive a round-trip through docx. I think this is because we can't add multiple styles on paragraphs. We keep track of the extent of the definition list by looking for the Definition style, but the code block needs a SourceCode style.

Not sure what to do about this. We can replace the invalid test file but then we'll get a test failure because it's of this kind!

[StephanMeijer]

On our side, in our converter, we changed both the input and output of the test. I think that is actually the intended thought behind the test. I do recommmend that.

[jgm]

I think this test is meant to test a case where you have a code block inside a definition list. Pandoc simply can't handle that, it seems.

[StephanMeijer]

But having a "code block inside a definition list" simple cannot occur. A Paragraph is either styled to be a block of code, or a definition (term). It cannot have two styles. Therefore, Pandoc's current behaviour is valid but the input for the test is not.