Re: [dita-comment] 1.3 troubleshooting topic permits empty remedy element?

[Kristen James Eberlein <kris@eberleinconsulting.com>]

Hi, Joe.

I am going to forward this to the DITA TC list so that it can be addressed there. In general, TC members should post to that list rather than the dita-comment list, although your post here was helpful since it prompted George Bina to post also.

Best,
Kris

Kristen James Eberlein
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting
www.eberleinconsulting.com
+1 919 682-2290; kriseberlein (skype)

On 4/1/2015 4:55 AM, Joe Pairman wrote:

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