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Subject: Re: [dita] DITA 1.2 suggestion--Inserting a ditamap into a bookmap
Hi Paul, A couple of things -- first, I know that Erik Hennum has spoken of a <mapref> element as a more general requirement, something that should be added to the mapgroup domain. I think it's one of the items from 2006 emails that did not get carried through onto the list. I just asked him about it, and he'll be posting more info about it soon. I think that one of the domain proposals for 1.2 would allow it to be placed in bookmap without also putting in <topicref>. That said - I think that it does actually make sense to use <chapter> to point to another map. In our early prototypes, many users expected this to work. They typically have one map that includes a top level topicref, which is the start of the chapter. Those that have multiple top-level topicrefs in the target map all expect that the <chapter> reference will cast each top-level element as a chapter -- there does not really seem to be any other alternative, other than failure, which is not too user friendly. The same is true for <part>, which seems to cast each top-level item in the target map as a part. I'd worry that replacing these with a <mapref> element would simply cause us to lose the semantics of the reference - how do we know if the target represents a chapter or a part? The specialized element is actually describing the role that this reference plays in the current context. For example, the chapter element today indicates nothing about the type of a topic, only that it plays the role of a chapter. Replacing the specialized element with an element that indicates the type of the target, like mapref indicating that the target is a map, loses any description of that role. In a map with more groupings than just part and chapter, this loss would likely be more severe. Robert D Anderson IBM Authoring Tools Development Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit (507) 253-8787, T/L 553-8787 "Grosso, Paul" <pgrosso@ptc.com> wrote on 03/19/2007 01:41:14 PM: > This is a DITA 1.2 suggestion to improve how one inserts > a ditamap reference into a bookmap. > > The problem is that, to reference a ditamap from a bookmap, > one might have a bookmap that looks like this: > > <bookmap> > <chapter href=somefile.ditamap format=ditamap/> > </bookmap> > > However, this can be very misleading since the things in > the referenced ditamap file may or may not be chapters. > Having to use chapter to reference a ditamap from a > bookmap is therefore very confusing to users. > > We could allow topicref in bookmap's everywhere chapter and > part are currently allowed. That would permit: > > <bookmap> > <topicref href=somefile.ditamap format=ditamap/> > </bookmap> > > However, allowing topicref would open to door to references > to other things besides ditamaps. > > The preferred solution would be to create something like "mapref" > as a specialization of topicref with a fixed value for format > of "ditamap" and possibly a fixed value for scope of "local". > (I'm less sure about scope, but I can't think of a case where it > makes sense to have a topicref to a DITA map that isn't available > at the time of composition.) That would allow users to enter: > > <bookmap> > <mapref href=somefile.ditamap/> > </bookmap> > > which would be a lot less confusing than the current situation.
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