Re: [dita] Software Bias in Current DITA Design and Documentation

[Michael Priestley <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>]

I believe section is primarily for regular
or repeating headings - the kinds of ones you would generate in a specialized
case. Wouldn't these subtasks have unique titles, eg "Replacing the
framitz"?

The main difference between nesting
topics and nesting sections would seem to be that topics require an ID
- perhaps that is a bit heavy handed, if you're certain that the subtask
will never be reused or referenced, but it doesn't seem like a bad precaution
against reusers/referencers coming up with cases you didn't think of it
when you created it.

Sum: if you make the subtasks actual
nested tasks, then reusers/referencers can make their own decisions about
whether it can be useful in their context (a different question from whether
it stands on its own). If you make them sections, then the reuser/referencer's
options are limited.

The rationale for identifying unique
headings as topics is to err on the side of maintainability - if it's a
heading, and it has unique information, then it's a legitimate destination
for references, and it makes sense to enable it at creation time, rather
than creating a bottleneck at first use that requires the destination to
be edited to change it from section to topic.

Michael Priestley
IBM DITA Architect and Classification Schema PDT Lead
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25

"W. Eliot Kimber" <ekimber@innodata-isogen.com>

01/17/2007 03:23 PM

To	Michael Priestley/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA
cc	<dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject	Re: [dita] Software Bias in Current DITA Design and Documentation

Michael Priestley wrote:

> The out-of-the-box task doctype explicitly supports task nesting as
the 
> more flexible of the two options.

By this I assume you mean the ability to nest task topics inside other
topics.

This is a reasonable solution, and it's my recommendation to our client
with the legacy data but it still seems more heavy-handed than necessary.

I think the analogy I would draw would be section--if it is reasonable
to use section to subdivide concept or reference information, I think 
it's equally reasonble to have a section-derived structure within task
to organize a task into a set of separately-title substeps when the 
substeps don't really justify creating separate topics.

Cheers,

E.
-- 
W. Eliot Kimber
Professional Services
Innodata Isogen
8500 N. Mopac, Suite 402
Austin, TX 78759
(214) 954-5198

ekimber@innodata-isogen.com
www.innodata-isogen.com