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Subject: RE: [dita] indexing question


Hmm, I forgot what I recorded myself as the TC decision this Tuesday: we said that an indexterm within the prolog points to the first page of the topic, and no one on the TC objected.
 
So unless someone comes back with serious pushback from some user community, that's the decision (and I'm okay with that). Sorry to cause confusion (so many committees and telcons that I forget sometimes how far we got on a certain topic).
 
We do still have (I believe) some outstanding issues about indexes--questions 4-7 in my email at
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/email/archives/200607/msg00034.html
 
paul


From: Grosso, Paul [mailto:pgrosso@ptc.com]
Sent: Friday, 2006 July 21 09:38
To: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [dita] indexing question

Actually, the point specified by an indexterm in the prolog never gets associated with any page since the prolog never gets put into the output (under the usual styling of "prolog"), so per the standard indexterm processing, an indexterm within a prolog would simply be ignored (i.e., never generate an index entry).
 
So I misstated when I said such might create an index entry pointing to the second page of the topic.
 
But I was correct that an indexterm in a prolog is useless (under the standard indexterm processing), so we should certainly suggest people don't do this.
 
Bruce is suggesting something akin to what Erik (I believe) implied a while ago: that an indexterm within a prolog have "special semantics" and "act as if" there is an indexterm on the first page of the topic.
 
We could do this. And perhaps this would address the user requirement to be able to have an index entry that points to the first page of a topic and therefore imply we don't need to allow indexterm within title and shortdesc and such. I'm just not sure if having to insert a prolog containing a keyword containing an indexterm--as opposed to just putting an indexterm in the title--will be acceptable to users.
 
Users on (and represented by members of) the TC--what do you say?
 
paul


From: Esrig, Bruce (Bruce) [mailto:esrig@lucent.com]
Sent: Friday, 2006 July 21 09:08
To: Grosso, Paul; dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [dita] indexing question

Paul,
 
The "point" specified by an indexterm in the prolog isn't necessarily after the title or shortdesc.
 
We can interpret that when the source markup contains an indexterm in the prolog, the indexterm is understood to be tied to a point at the beginning of the title.
 
That's just to preserve the primary method, in which an indexterm that applies to the entire topic is entered in the prolog.
 
Best wishes,
 
Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: Grosso, Paul [mailto:pgrosso@ptc.com]
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 9:33 AM
To: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [dita] indexing question

We could resolve the issue this way. The problem with this solution is the case where you have a long shortdesc (which precedes the prolog) so that the point-wise, subflow indexterm in the prolog ends up on the second page of the topic so your index entry does not have the page number of the first page in the topic. So, in fact, an indexterm in a prolog really has no useful purpose, since you cannot guarantee that its effect is going to be the desired one.
 
So I could live with this solution provided that we allow indexterm in other places that it is currently not allowed (e.g., title) so that a user can ensure they get an index entry pointing to the first page of a topic.
 
And once we do that, we would then issue a "best practices" statement saying not to put indexterm within prolog.
 
paul


From: Chris Wong [mailto:cwong@idiominc.com]
Sent: Friday, 2006 July 21 07:49
To: Erik Hennum; Rodolfo M. Raya
Cc: David Walters; dita@lists.oasis-open.org; Esrig, Bruce (Bruce); JoAnn Hackos; Grosso, Paul
Subject: RE: FW: FW: [dita] indexing question

From what I understand, the issue of treating indexterm differently in topic prolog vs content was due to the misunderstanding that the content of indexterm in content actually appears as part of that content. Since we have now clarified that indexterm's content is always a subflow, we can treat indexterm uniformly in both topic prolog and content. Is my understanding correct that this issue is now resolved?
 
Chris


From: Erik Hennum [mailto:ehennum@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 6:16 PM
To: Rodolfo M. Raya
Cc: Chris Wong; David Walters; dita@lists.oasis-open.org; Esrig, Bruce (Bruce); JoAnn Hackos; Grosso, Paul
Subject: RE: FW: FW: [dita] indexing question

Hi, Rudolfo, Dave, and other index enthusiasts:

A lightbulb went off for me. I think we're conflating two cases here.

In the case of <keyword>, the element is an inline within content and a subflow in the prolog as Rudolfo has stated.

In both cases, <keyword> identifies a word from a vocabulary. In the inline case, the vocabulary word is delimited within the flow. In the prolog case, the vocabulary word is identified as potential metadata for search engines.

In neither case do we have a base processing expectation of producing published indexes for the <keyword> element. We have sometimes speculated about the possibility of generating indexes from inline mentions (in Eliot's term) of vocabulary words, but I believe we've always deferred that.

By constract, <indexterm> is a subflow in all cases as Chris has stated. The contents of <indexterm> must be translated, but the translation of the content in which <indexterm> is embedded isn't affected in any way by the positioning of <indexterm>. That is, <indexterm> does not delimit part of the flow.

In the prolog, <indexterm> is specified as serving two purposes: feeding index terms to search engines as part of the metadata and indexing the topic.

Digression: The case could be made to treat <term> in exactly the same way as <keyword>, using <keyword> for words from formal languages and <term> for words from cultural or social vocabularies. That would require adding <term> to the prolog.


Hoping that clarifies,


Erik Hennum
ehennum@us.ibm.com

Inactive hide details for "Rodolfo M. Raya" <rodolfo@heartsome.net>"Rodolfo M. Raya" <rodolfo@heartsome.net>


          "Rodolfo M. Raya" <rodolfo@heartsome.net>

          07/18/2006 02:15 PM


To

David Walters/Rochester/IBM@IBMUS

cc

"Esrig, Bruce (Bruce)" <esrig@lucent.com>, Chris Wong <cwong@idiominc.com>, dita@lists.oasis-open.org, Erik Hennum/Oakland/IBM@IBMUS, JoAnn Hackos <joann.hackos@comtech-serv.com>, "Grosso, Paul" <pgrosso@ptc.com>

Subject

RE: FW: FW: [dita] indexing question

On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 15:03 -0500, David Walters wrote:

Hi,


      New example:
        The <p> text is complete.
                                                                                                         
         <topic>                                                                                          
         <prolog>                                                                                        
         <indexterm>term one</indexterm>                                                                  
         <indexterm>term two</indexterm>                                                                  
         </prolog>                                                                                        
         <body>                                                                                          
         <p>Paragraph that contains term one <indexterm>term one</indexterm>                              
         and term two <indexterm>term two</indexterm> inside.</p>                                        
         </body>                                                                                          
         </topic>                                                                                        

If the content of
<indexterm> is completely ignored when the topic is published as XHTML, PDF or any other format, then this element should be completely ignored at translation time.

The content of
<indexterm> doesn't need to be translated if it is only a location marker. The whole element can be replaced with a tag by the the translation tool.

Best regards,
Rodolfo
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