optional

optional — Optional information.

Synopsis

optional ::=

Attributes

Common attributes and common linking attributes.

No additional 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 being documented.

Processing expectations

Formatted inline.

Attributes

Common attributes and common linking attributes.

any attribute

Any attribute in any other explicit namespace

Parents

These elements contain optional: bridgehead, citation, citetitle, contrib, emphasis (db.emphasis), entry, firstterm (db.firstterm), glosssee, glossseealso, glossterm (db.glossterm), inlinestagedir, line, link, literallayout, member, meta (db.meta.content), olink, optional, orgdiv, para, phrase (db.phrase), primary, quote (db.quote), remark, secondary, see, seealso, simpara, subtitle, term, termdef, tertiary, title, titleabbrev.

Children

The following elements occur in optional: text, abbrev, acronym, alt, anchor, biblioref, coref, date, emphasis (db._emphasis), firstterm (db._firstterm), footnote, footnoteref, foreignphrase (db._foreignphrase), glossterm (db._glossterm), indexterm (db.indexterm.endofrange), indexterm (db.indexterm.singular), indexterm (db.indexterm.startofrange), inlinemediaobject, link, olink, optional, phrase (db._phrase), quote (db._quote), remark, subscript, superscript, trademark, wordasword, xref.

See Also

Related elements: literal.

Examples

1 |<article xmlns='http://docbook.org/ns/docbook'>
  |<title>Example optional</title>
  | 
  |<synopsis>
5 |ls <option>-abcCdfFgilLmnopqrRstux1</option>
  |   <optional>names</optional>
  |</synopsis>
  | 
  |</article>

  | 
  |ls -abcCdfFgilLmnopqrRstux1
  |   names