I don't think that we can promise to put a feature in 1.2
before we've scoped it and judged user demand for it. But I think that it is
very likely that you design such a feature (which seems quite doable) and find a
constituency for it (which seems quite reasonable) then it could go into 1.2 or
1.3.
Would it be sufficient right now for us to publically
document what the current proposal is NOT for, and in particular that it is NOT
designed for adding arbitrary attributes to specialized elements? This is a use
case that we all agree will not be handled and is therefore deferred until we
have a design and use cases.
It would be great to sieze a moment of consensus if such
does in fact exist.
I'm sorry, but this really does seem like
low-hanging fruit to me.
What's the point of putting the general
attribute in now and support roundtripping through that, if we could do this
instead?
We're not talking about attribute specialization here, but
mere attribute addition.
If we're not doing it now, I'd like to see it
in 1.2 - and to see it done right, I'd like to take the leadership of this
enhancement myself.
In return, I would remove my objections to what
you're doing with conditional attribute specialization - since now I can see
it in context as a very targeted solution for a particular kind of universal
attribute, and not as a stalking horse for requiring every added attribute to
submit to some kind of specialization rubric.
--Dana
Erik
Hennum wrote:
Hi, Bruce:
About Item 2, I hasten to note that the proposal for
extension by addition for properties is a potential direction rather than
something that's ready for implementation.
For example, we will need
to think through the implications of hiding and restoring additions during
roundtripping to the general form and back to the specialized form. We will
want to think through that problem along with other potential enhancements
of the capabilities of specialization.
I'm confident that, given the
minds involved in the DITA Technical Committee, we will be able to solve
those issues, but even I would agree that they are out of scope for DITA
1.1
My intent with the posting was to suggest in a more concrete way
that we can build on attribute specialization to much greater capability
later on -- not to add more to the DITA 1.1 plate. I'm sorry if I didn't
make that clear.
Thanks,
Erik Hennum ehennum@us.ibm.com
"Esrig, Bruce (Bruce)" <esrig@lucent.com>
I thought that was the strength of it ... no action
items!
I
thought I was clearing away side issues, leaving the
following: Item 1. Michael's
proposal Item 2. An alternate
proposal, yet to be named (see next paragraph)
Item 2. Now that Dana
Spradley has extracted the attribute extension thoughts from Erik's
"Extreme" paper, we seem to have two viable approaches on the
table.
I
had not realized that specialization of an element could
both - restrict the
content - add
attributes
So we'll need to look at that.
Bruce
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