1.3 troubleshooting topic permits empty remedy element?

[Joe Pairman <joepairman@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

I have a question about the DITA 1.3 troubleshooting topic, and I'm sending it to dita-comment because I'm not sure how (if at all) this question fits in the 1.3 review process.

Working with the experimental org.dita.troubleshooting plugin bundled with Oxygen 16.1, I noticed something about the content model for the remedy element. It can be empty, but if it has any content, it must have one of steps, steps-unordered, or steps-informal. 

Is this intentional? Might there be a situation where an empty remedy element is useful just to hang attributes on? If not, perhaps it would be easier all round to disallow empty remedy elements. Here's the relevant part of the DTD; removing the trailing question mark would disallow the empty element.

<!—                    LONG NAME: Remedy                          —>
<!ENTITY % remedy.content
                       “((%title;)?, (%responsibleParty;)?,
                         (%steps; | 
                           %steps-unordered; |
                           %steps-informal;)
                        )?”
>

Thanks for any info or thoughts.

Joe