RE: [dita] indexing question

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Wong [mailto:cwong@idiominc.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, 2006 July 25 08:30
> To: Grosso, Paul; dita@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [dita] indexing question
> 
> When you move images like that -- effectively converting them into end
> notes -- you are  moving content out of the narrative flow. 

Agreed.

> This is not
> so much an indexing problem as it is a general DITA issue. 

Agreed.  Formatting is a hard problem, and writing specs
for such is difficult too.  That doesn't mean we can punt.

> We cannot
> and should not decide every possible processing variant.
> 

I think you have to.  You cannot write a standard that doesn't
address some situations.  You can address them by saying that
we leave it up to the implementation to decide what to do (though
that should be done only when necessary), but you cannot write
a standard that says "do index ranges--you know what I mean".

So, what is the answer to my question?  I think the DITA spec
has to answer it.  I'd be happy to say that the image is not
part of the index range, but we have to put something into the
spec about this.

> As for the Q 6 and 7 response below, we already have a prescribed
> behavior for orphaned or misarranged index range pairs. It applies to
> both maps and topics. I still don't see what the issue is.
> 

You are correct that we already have prescribed behavior, 
and we could stick with that as an unambiguous solution.

I am pointing out some drawbacks from the user's point of
view to your suggested solution.  I am asking the TC to
consider if the supposed benefits of being able to start
an index range in a map file and end it in a referenced
topic [What are the use cases?  Is there ever any good
reason to do this?  Doesn't this make reuse of topics
impossible if a topic ends an index range that is expected
to be started in a map?] are outweighed by the disadvantage
of not being able to flag this as an error.

I prefer to say that having an index range that starts in a 
map file has to end in the map file or else it's an error.
I think that is preferable behavior.

paul


> Chris 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Grosso, Paul [mailto:pgrosso@ptc.com] 
> Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 11:09 AM
> To: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [dita] indexing question
> 
>  
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Chris Wong [mailto:cwong@idiominc.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, 2006 July 18 09:19
> > To: Grosso, Paul; dita@lists.oasis-open.org
> > Subject: RE: [dita] indexing question
> 
> > 
> > 5 and 6: an index range is just a range: any content 
> between two index
> 
> > range markers constitute the index range. An index range 
> starts where 
> > it starts and ends where it ends. That includes figures, 
> part or whole
> 
> > paragraphs ... anything. That is the point of the index 
> range marker, 
> > that it can express index ranges in a manner orthogonal of the XML 
> > structure. I don't see the ambiguity: why should anything 
> NOT be in an
> 
> > index range if so delineated?
> 
> Suppose I have something like (pseudocode, not actual tagging used):
> 
>   start index range
>   para1
>   image
>   para2
>   end index range
> 
> Now suppose, because my stylesheet says all images get floated to the
> end of the topic they are in, para1 starts on page 15, para2 ends on
> page 16, and the image floats to page 22.
> 
> What index entry should be generated?  One with 15-16 for the page?
> Or one with 15-16,22 for the page?
> 
> I see the ambiguity.
> 
> > 
> > 7: I'd answer "yes": that seems the obvious interpretation. 
> An index 
> > range starts where it starts, and ends where it ends.
> 
> On questions 6 and 7, the issue here really is whether we 
> want to allow
> index ranges that are completely asynchronous to both the markup
> structure and even the file structure.  It can be both a processing
> problem as well as a debugging nightmare (for the user) if we 
> allow such
> asynchronicity.
> Imagine a user mistakening switching index-range-start and
> index-range-end (so the end comes before the start) in a 
> topic and then
> having an index range surrounding that topic in the map file.  If we
> allow the "end"
> within the topic to end to "start" in the map file, there will be no
> errors, but the result is not going to be what the user wanted.
> 
> So one other obvious interpretation is that it is an error 
> for an "end"
> not in the map file to end a "start" in the map file.
> 
> paul