Empty elements fixer behaviour

[NickSdot]

<para> and hence its parent <listitem> are empty in the below example. Leaving this here as something that stood out to me. Not sure if we need a RemoveEmptyElementsFixer or something.

Current result:

  <varlistentry xml:id="constant.f-dupfd">
   <term>
    <constant>F_DUPFD</constant>
    (<type>int</type>)
   </term>
   <listitem>
-    <para></para>
+    <simpara></simpara>
   </listitem>
  </varlistentry>

[jordikroon]

While it is very likely there are empty elements that could be removed, the example you mention breaks Docbook validation.

A <varlistentry> requires both a term and a listitem. So removing the list item will result in the following validation error.

error: element "varlistentry" incomplete; missing required element "listitem"

Removing just para or simpara here will also result in a validation error, because listitem requires a child.

error: element "listitem" incomplete; expected element "address", "anchor", "annotation", "bibliolist", "blockquote", "bridgehead", "calloutlist", "caution", "classsynopsis", "cmdsynopsis", "constraintdef", "constructorsynopsis", "danger", "destructorsynopsis", "enumsynopsis", "epigraph", "equation", "example", "fieldsynopsis", "figure", "formalgroup", "formalpara", "funcsynopsis", "glosslist", "important", "indexterm", "info", "informalequation", "informalexample", "informalfigure", "informaltable", "itemizedlist", "literallayout", "macrosynopsis", "mediaobject", "methodsynopsis", "msgset", "note", "orderedlist", "packagesynopsis", "para", "procedure", "productionset", "programlisting", "programlistingco", "qandaset", "remark", "revhistory", "screen", "screenco", "screenshot", "segmentedlist", "sidebar", "simpara", "simplelist", "synopsis", "table", "task", "tip", "typedefsynopsis", "unionsynopsis", "variablelist" or "warning"

So in that sense, a sniffer that checks for redundant element could be useful, but it's dangerous area where it's very likely we will break something.

[NickSdot]

Noted. Internals I am not aware of yet. :) If you don't mind I leave this open to explore at a later point.