RE: [dita] Feature 12050--rationalizing href, format, scope, and type attributes

["Grosso, Paul" <pgrosso@ptc.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Deborah_Pickett@moldflow.com 
> [mailto:Deborah_Pickett@moldflow.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, 2007 July 04 19:07
> To: DITA TC list
> Subject: Re: [dita] Feature 12050--rationalizing href, 
> format, scope, and type attributes
> 
> "Grosso, Paul" <pgrosso@ptc.com> wrote on 29/06/2007 07:30:22 AM:
> > The attached 12050.htm is an HTML document showing the
> > analysis of use of these attributes in DITA 1.1 and
> > detailing the suggested spec changes for DITA 1.2.

> - An empty @href is a valid URI (it tends to mean the base 
> directory, by default the one that contains the current 
> document).  The proposed wording doesn't say that empty @href 
> is special, so the default meaning should still apply.  This 
> isn't how DITA-OT handles empty @hrefs, which it assumes are 
> the same as absent @hrefs.  (I think that DITA-OT does this 
> to facilitate handling of <topichead>.)  Is DITA-OT off-spec, 
> or is there a reason to define empty @href specially in the 
> DITA spec? 

OT behavior does not belong in the spec, but we should clarify
things if some values of @href do not mean what they mean
for a URI reference.

I don't see anything in the spec to indicate that an empty
string for topicref's href means anything special.  If, in
fact, it is necessary for @href="" to mean something special
in DITA's case, we need to include that information in the spec.

Michael, Robert, Don, et al., is it the case that @href="" 
has special meaning for DITA?

> 
> - @longdescref getting @...scope and @...type brethren: Is 
> this the right direction to go?  Is it better to move the 
> longdesc to an element and give it the standard @href, 
> @scope, @format and @type attributes?  There was apparently 
> discussion about this at this week's TC teleconference. 

I have forgotten, and I haven't seen Tuesday's minutes yet.

Who took the action to develop this proposal?

> 
> - map/@anchorref and navref/@mapref: I don't even know if 
> these are URI-references, whether they have fragment suffixes 
> or not, or whether they are something else entirely.  If they 
> are URI-ish, then now is a good time to pin down their 
> format.  Can anyone who uses them speak on their behalf? 

I agree with Deborah that we should probably clarify these
attributes too, but I could use some help in doing so.

Is there any reason we shouldn't give these two attributes
the same standard description that we give to @href?

paul