Formatted as a displayed block.

There are many ways to present a variable list. DocBook does not mandate any particular presentation. The termlength attribute may influence the presentation of terms. The termlength attribute is often specified as a number of characters, but other forms are possible. This is an interchange issue.

Common attributes and common linking attributes.

any attribute

Any attribute in any other explicit namespace

spacing

Specifies (a hint about) the spacing of the content

Enumerated values:
“compact”	The spacing should be "compact".
“normal”	The spacing should be "normal".

termlength

Indicates a length beyond which the presentation system may consider a term too long and select an alternate presentation for that term, item, or list

These elements contain variablelist: abstract, acknowledgements, annotation, answer, appendix, article, bibliodiv, bibliography, bibliolist, blockquote, callout, calloutlist, caption (db.caption), caution, chapter, colophon, constraintdef, cover, danger, dedication, entry, example, figure, footnote, glossary, glossdef, glossdiv, glosslist, important, index, indexdiv, informalexample, informalfigure, itemizedlist, legalnotice, listitem, meta (db.meta.content), msgexplan, msgtext, note, orderedlist, para, partintro, preface, procedure, qandadiv, qandaset, question, refsect1, refsect2, refsect3, refsection, refsynopsisdiv, result, revdescription, sect1, sect2, sect3, sect4, sect5, section, setindex, sidebar, simplesect, step, taskprerequisites, taskrelated, tasksummary, td, textobject, th, tip, toc, tocdiv, topic, variablelist, warning.

The following elements occur in variablelist: 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 (db.indexterm.endofrange), indexterm (db.indexterm.singular), indexterm (db.indexterm.startofrange), info (db.titleforbidden.info), info (db.titleonly.info), informalequation, informalexample, informalfigure, informaltable (db.cals.informaltable), informaltable (db.html.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 (db.cals.table), table (db.html.table), task, tip, title, titleabbrev, typedefsynopsis, unionsynopsis, variablelist, varlistentry, warning.