Planning for constraints (DITA 1.2)

dita-sidsc message

The DITA 1.2 constraints feature can help us provide various levels of "strictness" without excessive duplication.

Some SIDSC users will have not XML standard in place for register data. For those companies, SIDSC will probably be used in "standalone" mode, meaning all of the data-centric elements will be stored in the same SIDSC file, which can be used to generate documentation and other design artifacts (RTL, IP-XACT, header files, etc.).

Others will adopt SIDSC as a means to supplement IP-XACT (or other XML) with document-centric information. For those users, only a small subset of SIDSC will be required.

I would like to propose that we relax as many of the DTD rules as possible to create an SIDSC "base" type and release with two pre-configured constrained variants. So, we'd have:

SIDSC Base: Lowest level of restriction. The only required elements are those required to ensure specialization integrity to the DITA base types. This version will not be recommended for use as-is, but as the base type for local processing/business requirements (implemented as company-specific constraints and specializations).

SIDSC Standalone: Implements the necessary constraints to ensure that the schema enforces the minimal amount of form required to generate documentation (and present it meaningfully). Other requirements may also exist. This version will have many of the constraints already in the DTDs and be the version that the architectural and language specification covers. This will be the version that the sample stylesheets will support.

SIDSC Documentation: Supports the document-centric information required for adopters using SIDSC in conjunction with other XML (such as IP-XACT). This version could be offered and cited by name by IEEE or Accellera (the new owner of IP-XACT).

We can begin this work, but it will mean that we cannot release until the DITA 1.2 spec is approved, which should happen at the beginning of 2010. On the other hand, I dont think we'll be able to release before that time, anyway.