RE: [dita] Complexity of bookmap content model

["Grosso, Paul" <pgrosso@ptc.com>]

Thanks to PaulP and Robert for the additional discussion
(and apologies that I had to miss some of the previous
discussion on this topic).

My concern remains that some users who think of appendices
as back matter will be initially confused--and, as PaulP
said earlier about something else, editors that can collapse
elements won't be able to collapse down all the appendices 
by collapsing back matter (as some users will want to do)--but
if no one else on the TC is concerned about this user confusion,
I can live with appendices preceding backmatter in bookmap. 

paul 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Prescod [mailto:paul.prescod@xmetal.com] 
> Sent: Monday, 2006 June 26 20:02
> To: Robert D Anderson; dita@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [dita] Complexity of bookmap content model
> 
> Since we have arguments both in favour of the view that 
> appendices "are"
> backmatter and "are not", I would like to hear explanations of what
> difference it makes. No book that I have on my personal book 
> shelf has a
> user-visible section called "back matter". Instead, there are 
> appendices
> and then there are booklists like indices. 
> 
> Recall that we only added backmatter in order to simplify some content
> models. Nobody asked for it on processing or display grounds. 
> Therefore
> it will presumably be essentially invisible to stylesheets and other
> processors. So I would suggest that the question should not be: "are
> appendices backmatter" and should instead be: "in what order do
> real-world authors need to put things like booklists, notices and
> appendices." My informal poll suggests that appendices nearly always
> precede booklists, colophons and other backmatter-ish items. 
> Therefore I
> can't see how it matters whether they precede the backmatter 
> element or
> precede the other elements WITHIN the backmatter element.
> 
> If I am correct, then I would suggest we flip a coin, and put them in
> ONE place.
> 
>  Paul Prescod
>