Re: [dita] Feature Request: Make tgroup optional w/in table

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

The XML Exchange Table Model specification doesn't actually appear to 
have any language about conformance--the strongest thing their is is a 
caution that making content models less restrictive might impair 
interchange.

However, it's hard to see how making tgroups optional could do that, 
especially in the DITA case, since a table with no tgroups isn't a 
useful table anyway (except in the context of conref, which would be 
resolved before a table processor would be expected to see it).

I would also suggest that any OASIS-table-aware editor that depended on 
tgroup being required was just poorly designed.

But it's not that big a deal--it just seemed sort of odd to me and was 
one of the few places within body content that a likely conref target 
cannot be empty (I suppose all of the lists have the same problem--you'd 
have to have one empty list item).


I also agree that the current conref= approach is just not right--it 
reflects an SGML legacy that was a poorly-thought-out feature in SGML.

I would much prefer a replacement for conref= that was based on XInclude 
and that allowed, for example, the name of the referencing element and 
the referenced element to be different but still have a clear 
declaration of what the allowed reference targets are (e.g., some form 
of "reftype" attribute as we provided in the HyTime standard).

But reforming conref= is definitely a 2.0 thing, as it needs to be done 
in concert with a more general reformation of DITA's addressing and 
linking semantics.

So I withdraw this feature request.

Cheers,

Eliot

----
W. Eliot Kimber
Professional Services
Innodata Isogen
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(214) 954-5198

ekimber@innodata-isogen.com
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