transitional text and conref with delta

[Erik Hennum <ehennum@us.ibm.com>]

Hi, Esteemed Technical Committee:

As a followup to today's discussion, I'd like to add one more alternative to Robert's list of options for transitional text:

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200605/msg00031.html

If DITA 1.2 introduces the feature of conref push or pull with delta:

http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/download.php/15120/IssueNumber17e.html
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/download.php/15117/IssueNumber17b.html

a writer could insert or append transitional text to any topic.

This approach has several benefits:

• Flexibility in supplying transitional text either before or after the standalone topic or even modifying the standalone topic for the book context if need be.

• Transparency in that the transitional content is associated by explicit reference with the transitioned topic instead of being merged into the output based on rules that aren't manifest in the XML.

• Economy through use of a general-purpose function instead of a separate special feature.

It also addresses the concerns about the potential for inline transitions to mingle content into the context.

For those reasons, I'd suggest that we defer the transitional text issue, get DITA 1.1 out the door, and bear down on DITA 1.2 including conref with delta.  If we discover that conref with delta doesn't solve the transitional text problem, we can always introduce a different solution. If conref with delta does work, we will have avoided creating legacy that has to be deprecated later.


Thanks,


Erik Hennum
ehennum@us.ibm.com