Re: Issue #20 (was [dita] Really two issues?)

[Michael Priestley <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>]

Comments below

Michael Priestley
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com

paul.prescod@blastradius.com wrote on 07/26/2005 08:02:09
AM:

> Mr. Paul Prescod added the following comment to the IssueNumber20.
> html document in the OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture
> (DITA) TC Group.
> 
> Perhaps this is really a few issues conflated into one. 
> 
> Issue one is allowing new attributes on specialized elements. 

Actually this is not treated in the feature. The feature
is specifically for adding new global attributes intended for use as filtering/flagging
attributes (what are called "metadata attributes" in the architectural
spec). This is suggested to be done via an extension of domain specialization.
That extension might also be applicable to other attributes, but not without
some work. 

Adding new attributes to a new element would presumably
be an extension of structural specialization. I can imagine there would
be ways to accomodate this (equivalent needs for preserving the attribute
values in some processable form through the trials and tribulations of
generalization and respecialization) but it's not in scope for this feature
I think.

> 
> Issue two is treating some attributes as filtering attributes. One
> can imagine hundreds of "extension attributes" that have
nothing to 
> do with filtering.

Absolutely. The current way to determine which attributes
to treat as filtering attributes is by listing (they are enumerated in
the architectural spec). The proposed way is via specialization (make them
all specializations of an ancestral props attribute; any new filtering
attribute would need to inherit from that base attribute as well in order
to be considered a filtering attribute).
> 
> Issue three is defining standards (ditaval?) for managing 
> conditional attributes.

This is already documented in non-normative fashion
in the spec, and in use by the toolkit.

> 
> Also: I feel it is very important to be able to add attributes 
> _without_ specializing the elements that the attributes reside on.
> I'm not sure if you intended this.

It is in fact all I intended at this point :-) All
the current feature describes is how to add new global attributes via substitution
(ie wherever @audience is currently allowed, the feature would allow expansion
into @role, @skill, etc.).

I will update the feature to hopefully make this all
clearer.

> 
> 
> View Document Details and Comments:
> http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/document.php?
> document_id=13756
> 
> Download Document:  
> http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/download.
> php/13756/IssueNumber20.html
> 
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> - Administration