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Subject: Re: [dita] Constraint Mechanism [was 1.2 Requirements Ranking]
- From: Erik Hennum <ehennum@us.ibm.com>
- To: "W. Eliot Kimber" <ekimber@innodata-isogen.com>
- Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2007 20:43:04 -0700
Hi, Eliot:
While I'd very much like to see constraints for DITA, I see the point about constraints putting strain on the architectural attributes.
On the other hand, worth noting:
- Based on input from Nokia and XMetaL and threads on the DITA user's group from 2 years ago, the need to simplify content models without specialization is an issue that some DITA adopters have early on.
- Because of the promises that the DITA architecture makes about shared commonality, extensibility, and interoperability, DITA can't offer the same escape hatch as a vocabulary without an architecture. In particular, extending content models by restriction breaks the DITA architecture for inbound interoperability. Extending content models by addition breaks the DITA architecture completely.
Contextual domains (meaning domain substitution limited to specific container elements such as <pLayout> substitution for <data> only within <p> rather than globally as present) seem easier to manage than full-blown constraints. As noted previously, topic nesting already exhibits a kind of contextual substitution. So maybe contextual domains would be a reasonable half loaf?
What do you think?
Erik Hennum
ehennum@us.ibm.com
"W. Eliot Kimber" <ekimber@innodata-isogen.com>
"W. Eliot Kimber" <ekimber@innodata-isogen.com>
03/21/2007 11:24 AM
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Something that Erik's comments bring up that we should consider as well
is the potential for the process of trying to define a constraint
mechanism to force us to revisit the entire specialization mechanism and
its details.
...
I think that *eventually* we need to have that discussion, but I think
it needs to be in the context of a larger 2.0 discussion, when we have
more freedom to rethink the core DITA architecture and syntax.
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