RE: [dita] Groups - Proposal #12035: Generic collation element (dita-proposal-collation-newtemplate.html) uploaded

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: deborah_pickett@moldflow.com 
> [mailto:deborah_pickett@moldflow.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, 2007 August 21 0:46
> To: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: [dita] Groups - Proposal #12035: Generic collation 
> element (dita-proposal-collation-newtemplate.html) uploaded
> 
> HTML version of proposal for reading convenience.

See also my earlier comments, few of which have been addressed.

It still doesn't say much about what anyone is supposed to do
with this new element.  About all it does say is:

 Toolkits which use strings for collation purposes need to
 compare the contents of collate-as instead of its container
 element where it exists....

 Toolkits will be able to correctly sort glossaries with unusual
 titles. Japanese users will get more benefit from this feature
 than others. The index-sort-as element may be unifiable with
 collate-as.

(I'll assume by "toolkits" you mean "DITA implementations".)

That does not say what the user can expect.

Just what are implementations supposed to do with collate-as?
DITA doesn't define any DITA markup's processing expectations 
to include sorting except for index processing.  So how does 
a standard-compliant DITA implementation know when there are
"collation expectations?"  And when can a user expect collate-as 
to do anything in a standard-compliant DITA implementation?

The text above talks about sorting glossaries, but where in
the DITA spec do we talk about sorting glossaries?

Finally, though you say it now "defers to existing elements 
like <index-sort-as> where they exist", the last sentence
talks about unifying index-sort-as with collate-as.  Unless
we change our plans for index-sort-as in DITA 1.2 to account
for collate-as, I don't think it's appropriate for one 1.2
proposal to conflict with another.  This will just confuse
everyone--users and implementors--as to how indexing should
work.

paul