Re: [dita] Catching up with TC activity

[Don Day <dond@us.ibm.com>]

Agreed with Michael on the qualified syntax for referencing targets. The qualified syntax allows unabiguous referencing of targets within nested topics, for example. IBM content has a good deal of such usage, so the question of interoperability is certainly worth raising.

Regarding your two specific questions, Chris:

1. The TC has agreed on designating DTDs as the normative version for the 1.0 draft (somewhere in late November, December as I recall) based on the numbers of DTD-based implementations that interoperate reliably vs the difficulty we've had nailing down a specializable Schema pattern that provides anywhere near the same interoperability among Schema-based tools. We are going out with a pattern that works better than previous patterns we've tested, but it is a compromise in that it leaves out the desired inheritance pattern, which can't be handled by most current schema processors. Eric Sirois can provide more sordid details on his attempts to bring order to the DITA Schema universe. We've designated "Schemas as normative" to post 1.0 discussion, most likely a 2.0 design-level issue since it depends on how widely the XSD 1.1 updates have been deployed by that time.

2. Whether there are any user-visible changes for moving to the Exchange Table Model depends on how an editor supports column resizing and span controls. Ideally, users should not have to interact directly with the markup for width and span values. I'll let the other editor implementors speak to this question, as my ideal vision for editors usually exceeds reality.

Regards,
--
Don Day <dond@us.ibm.com>
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
IBM Lead DITA Architect
11501 Burnet Rd., MS 9037D018, Austin TX 78758
Ph. 512-838-8550 (T/L 678-8550)

"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
--T.S. Eliot
Michael Priestley <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>

Michael Priestley <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>

01/25/2005 11:58 AM

To	Christopher Wong <cwong@idiominc.com>
cc	DITA TC list <dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject	Re: [dita] Catching up with TC activity

Hi Chris,

The format file.xml#topicid/elementid has always been the format for references between topics below the topic level (eg conref to a paragraph, or xref to a fig). In DITA's case, "always" means since the first public release of the toolkit, in 2000.

Michael Priestley
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
Dept PRG IBM Canada phone: 416-915-8262
Toronto Information Development

Christopher Wong <cwong@idiominc.com>

01/25/2005 12:33 PM

To	DITA TC list <dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
cc
Subject	[dita] Catching up with TC activity

Hi. I am having a little trouble catching up with the TC's work, even
with the help of the list archives. I assume the official DTDs/schemas
will become available at some point. In the meantime, could any of you
update me -- however tersely -- on any of these issues?

1. Do we still have any issues with DITA v.s. XML Schema limitations?

2. Are there any user-visible changes to the table model?

Also, I wonder when we came to the decision on the href convention for
pointing to content IDs, href=""blah/blah/foo.xml#topicid/contentid"." We
have been implementing on the assumption that the format was
href=""blah/blah/foo.xml#contentid"," and will obviously have to make some
adjustments. I don't want to reopen the issue, but could anyone tell me
how we got to the approved format?

Thanks in advance,

Chris