12015 - Conref Push

["Michael Gannon" <michael.gannon@xmetal.com>]

Title: 12015 - Conref Push

At first glance I’m against this proposal, but that may be due to my lack of understanding. As I read it, the use case is that an author B can update a topic that another author owns without having to update the topic itself. Is this a common use case? Can author B not just update the topic him/herself? Is creating a new version of the topic really that much of an issue? I believe Michael P. mentioned in the meeting a couple of weeks ago that a customer really needs this included in 1.2, so maybe I’m missing something obvious.

Would the inclusion of 12013 in DITA 1.2 negate the need for this? Author B could pull in bits of the original topic and add the extra information around the bits. All of the current reuse techniques in DITA are pull, and I think keeping it this way would be the simplest way forward.

Also, if it has to be in, I think calling this conref is a bad idea; two types of conref that do the opposite of each other seems like it would introduce a lot of confusion for users.

The original proposal is here:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/15120/IssueNumber17e.html

Michael.

Michael Gannon

Software Developer

JustSystems Inc.

 

778-327-6352

michael.gannon@xmetal.com

www.xmetal.com