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Subject: RE: [dita] Specialization of Attributes



Use cases for generalization of content (including attributes) with preservation of functionality and DTDs (these are made up, and meant to be illustrative not authoritative):

XML DB use case:
- let's say our content is getting served up by a company-wide CMS that understands DTD/schema but not specialization
- needs each DTD/schema registered for the sake of defining tables, breaking out elements for fast search/lookup/relationships, etc.
- if we can generalize content to a known DTD, can serve up content without reworking table structure every time
- but we still want the specialized behavior at display time
- so checkin/checkout would probably perform generalization/respecialization, to enforce specialized rules at editing time

translation case:
- given a translation tool that is configured per DTD/schema
- generalize to avoid added cost per new specialization
- translators check content out of translation system, working with editor of their choice (may be DTD aware)
- translators run previews using specialized transforms to ensure output is acceptable in new language
- batch-mode validation runs at night, checking out all content and respecializing to ensure changes are specialization-valid

The second case does run a risk of translators breaking specialized structural rules, but the risk can be mitigated by the batch validation step - not as good as in-editor validation, but better than nothing.

Michael Priestley
IBM DITA Architect and Classification Schema PDT Lead
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25


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