Re: [dita-learningspec] Notes from OU.xml to DITA

[Eliot Kimber <ekimber@reallysi.com>]

On 6/4/09 9:05 AM, "Chuck Allen" <chucka@hrinterop.org> wrote:

> I have one or two other issues I've encountered that may be valuable for the
> group to consider. Perhaps we can briefly discuss.
> 
> The first issue arises in trying to handle the depth that is within the OU xml
> format. I've sketched the rough hierarchy below. In
> theory, DITA should handle this very well. I'd imagine the usual conversion
> approach would be output the Section, Subsection, etc.
> pieces to topics and to deal with the hierarchy in the learningMap. As I
> mentioned in my previous email, one way a learningMap
> handles hierarchy by allowing "learningGroups" to nest within other
> learningGroups. ***The problem I'm having with the current
> version of the learning specializations is that I'm winding up with a good
> number of "empty topics" (empty except for the title,
> etc.) in cases where an OU Section doesn't contain any other content other
> than a SubSection. ***

Empty topics (what I call "title-only topics") are currently a necessary
evil because of the way that the OT and other tools handle (or don't handle)
topicheads. In particular, the PDF processor only creates body divisions for
literal topics, not topicheads.

For the 1.2 spec we've clarified the meaning of the @chunk attribute to make
it clear that you can chunk a topichead to a literal topic, thus removing
the need to have title-only topics just to make things like the PDF process
work. However, this does require setting the chunk attribute (of course, it
would be easy to create a specialized topichead that sets the chunk
attribute appropriately).

> *** What I find myself wanting is the <topichead> element available in regular
> DITA Topic Maps (or something equivalent), but this
> doesn't seem to be available. ("<topichead> provides a title-only entry in a
> navigation map, as an alternative to the fully-linked
> title provided by the <topicref> element.") ***

Looking at the learning map module, it looks like all the specialized
topicref elements have href= as optional, which means you should be able to
use any of them as a topic head (that is, a topicref with a navtitle but no
@href attribute).
 
> **OU Hierarchy**
> Item
> -Preface
> --Introduction
> ---LearningOutcomes
> -Unit
> --Session
> ---Section (3 in my test instance)
> ----SubSection
> -----SubSubSection
> ------Activity
> -------Question
> -------Answer
> -BackMatter
> 
> The other issue I'm running into may simply be that "Activity" sections in the
> OU.xml may not have a exact equivalent in the
> learning specialization. Conceptually, this stuff looks like assessment
> content (question and answer content), but the OU xml seems
> to have more complex Q&A content than in the DITA specializations. If you take
> a look through the OU instance, you'll find things
> like tables in Q&A content.
 
> One thought is that this stuff (Q&A content) isn't really semantically
> equivalent. Perhaps "Activity" content just maps out to
> generic "topic" content. I'd welcome any other ideas on how to map the below.

This is the approach I've taken in the past, for example for test-prep
manuals where each "question" is really a combination of generic topic body
elements with embedded LC assessment elements. In particular, the "prompt"
for the question consisted of any number of paragraphs, graphic references,
etc, before the actual LC prompt (which is a single paragraph, reflecting
IMS-QTI limitations).

In this case, I had specialized the LC assessments into a domain that
matched the client's assessment vocabulary and practice. I could then mix
those in to different topic types that represented question sets, groups,
and so on.

The other approach that I considered was to introduce a "br" element that
let you get the visual effect of paragraph breaks within the LC question
prompt. But I'm not sure that's appropriate (NOTE: the DITA4Publishers
"formatting" domain provides a <br/> element.)
 
Cheers,

Eliot

----
Eliot Kimber | Senior Solutions Architect | Really Strategies, Inc.
email:  ekimber@reallysi.com <mailto:ekimber@reallysi.com>
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