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Subject: RE: [dita] bookmap specialization question
- From: Bruce Esrig <esrig-ia@esrig.com>
- To: Erik Hennum <ehennum@us.ibm.com>, "Amber Swope" <amber.swope@xmetal.com>
- Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 03:27:57 -0500
It is tempting to relax our ideal (in order to
limit the work of the DITA TC) of specifying only a source language and
not directly supporting processing.
Would we contemplate offering formal support for a convenience mechanism
that defines processing based on templates?
Rather than requiring customization of processing by programming, it
would be more convenient if customizers could declare a pseudo-topic with
its sources and have those sources pulled together to form actual
output.
A desperately-needed prerequisite would be a templating language that
supports some simple layout ideas (a contradiction in terms?). At its
most primitive, this could be a hybrid of conref-like constructs and
FO-like directives.
The advantage would be that there would be a place to go when the need to
customize crystallizes, short of reaching in to the
implementation.
Best wishes,
Bruce
At 06:48 PM 11/17/2006, Erik Hennum wrote:
Hi, Amber:
I would submit there's a big difference between the preface (which has a
content flow composed of paragraphs, lists, and so on like any other
topic) and the title and cover pages, which have values but have no real
content flow. We want to be able to put any topic into the role of a
preface, but if we used topics for the cover and title, we would
certainly need to create topic specializations that allow only the
specified data values.
I'd also submit that we realize some significant benefits by keeping the
book information in one spot instead of splitting out book information
into cover and title topics:
- Some information might be appear in both the cover and title (but we
surely only want to maintain those values in one place).
- The processor should be free to choose which information to display
as part of the cover and title. For instance, one layout might choose to
display product version information on the cover page while another
chooses to display it on the title page.
- The summary book information is easily processed by applications that
are entirely indifferent to the layout of the book. For instance, a
bibliography builder.
In passing, because the cover and title are generated from bookinfo, it's
no accident that the information for a cover and title are already
defined as elements.
If we can generate the cover and title as part of the output, what's
gained by moving that information into topics? If the goal is to give
more of a WYSIWYG experience, I don't think that can be achieved with
cover and title topics. I would think that having a separate method for
defining the cover and title layout for the book information and then
rendering the book information in that shared layout would be much more
effective (but perhaps a lot of effort for just two pages).
Hoping that's useful,
Erik Hennum
ehennum@us.ibm.com
"Amber
Swope" <amber.swope@xmetal.com>
"Amber Swope"
<amber.swope@xmetal.com>
11/17/2006 02:38 PM
To
Erik
Hennum/Oakland/IBM@IBMUS
cc
<dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject
RE: [dita] bookmap specialization
question
Erik,
I agree that the
layout of the cover is up to the process, but the fact is that many folks
want a topic that is assigned the role of the cover. The same goes for
the title page. And the interesting thing about both of these is that, I
believe, most of the elements you would want to represent the information
are already in the bookmap specialization. For example, the title,
author, edition number, publisher, etc. are all in the bookmap
specialization and would hazard that having the role without every
possible piece of data is better than not having the role.
I guess I’m not
understanding the difference between assigning a role to a topic to be a
preface versus to be a title page.
Thanks,
A
From: Erik Hennum
[mailto:ehennum@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2006 12:41 PM
To: Amber Swope
Cc: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [dita] bookmap specialization
question
Hi, Amber:
In the preface case, the bookmap is assigning a role to a topic. Without
knowing the topic's role, a process can't apply special treatment to the
preface topic. Examples of that special treatment might be as trivial as
outputting a "Preface" label on the page or as sophisticated as
applying special weight to high-frequency words from the preface when
generating a fulltext search index for a book.
For the cover of the book, bookmap certainly needs to capture all of the
information that should appear on the cover. After that, however, the
layout of the cover is up to the process (as part of the separation of
presentation and content).
Hoping that clarifies,
Erik Hennum
ehennum@us.ibm.com
"Amber
Swope" <amber.swope@xmetal.com>
"Amber Swope"
<amber.swope@xmetal.com>
11/17/2006 11:43 AM
To
Erik Hennum/Oakland/IBM@IBMUS
cc
<dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject
RE: [dita] bookmap specialization
question
Thanks, Erik.
I guess I don’t understand that difference between specifying an
element for generating a cover or preface v. a preface, which the bookmap
specification does
provide.
Thanks, A
From: Erik Hennum
[mailto:ehennum@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2006 11:05 AM
To: Amber Swope
Cc: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [dita] bookmap specialization
question
Salutations,
Amber:
I think the expectation is that the book information provides everything
needed to generate cover and title pages and that, like all presentation,
the specification of the layout of the cover pages should be separate
from the content of the book.
A question is whether there might be easy ways for adopters to define
that layout -- but that question could be investigated separately without
slowing down the completion of bookmap.
Hoping that's interesting,
Erik Hennum
ehennum@us.ibm.com
"Amber
Swope" <amber.swope@xmetal.com>
"Amber Swope"
<amber.swope@xmetal.com>
11/17/2006 08:44 AM
To
<dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
cc
Subject
[dita] bookmap specialization
question
Hi there,
In reviewing the bookmap specialization, I realized that it contains
elements for many of the common pieces of a book, but is missing elements
for cover and title page. Is there a reason for this? I expected there to
be elements so that you can specify a <topicref> for these items.
Is it too late to add them?
Thanks, A
Amber Swope
Principal Consultant
XMetaL, a
JustSystems
company
Cell:
503-347-3569
amber.swope@xmetal.com
www.xmetal.com
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