Re: AW: [dita] Groups - DITA Proposed Feature #12021: Nesting sections (12021.html) uploaded

[Michael Priestley <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>]

Hi Chris,

When we reviewed this proposal with
Novartis, they said it met their needs - is that no longer the case?

In my own experience, there are different
reasons for grouping content together at authoring time and at delivery
time. You may want topics grouped together in a single document for authoring,
and split up for delivery, or vice versa. This is one of the issues addressed
by the chunking feature in 1.1.

So if a group decides not to nest topics
during authoring, but then wants to nest sections with multiple levels
of headings, I have to wonder why they aren't just nesting topics. But
I didn't think that was Novartis's problem.

As to whether "topics stand on
their own" vs. nesting sections - I think there are always some topics
that do not stand on their own - especially overview topics. Yet there
are still reasons to sometimes manage them or treat them as topics separately
- and sometimes that decision about whether it stands on its own is really
one the reuser has to make, not the author.

If the author uses topics for things
that have unique titles (ie introduce new subjects), and nests topics when
they need complex content, that leaves the door open for reusers to choose
topics to reuse, and make their own decision. If the author doesn't use
topics, then their content is not addressable or chunkable by others -
and the reuse door is closed.

Michael Priestley
Lead IBM DITA Architect 
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25

"SeicoDyne DITA" <dita@seicodyne.ch>

10/30/2007 09:56 AM

To	Michael Priestley/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA, "'Grosso, Paul'" <pgrosso@ptc.com>
cc	<dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject	AW: [dita] Groups - DITA Proposed Feature #12021:  Nesting sections (12021.html)   uploaded

Yes indeed we had that case last
year at Novartis, mainly regarding taking over legacy data.
 
The main point that Novartis mentioned
in that discussion was:
1st they decided that each topic
relates to one file in the database,
2nd if they are going to split
content of one topic in several topics, most of their content will loose
the context. So content that belongs literally together would be split
appart into separate files. This splitting would not only make the content
highly difficult to manage, those topics would no longer be meaningful
when they stand alone.
Novartis has not yet decided if
they go for DITA, Docbook or if they develop their own schema. 
From my last discussions I heared
that they will go for DITA and call it DITA+ by bending or breaking our
rules. As already mentioned, how Novartis will proceed is not yet decided,
they are waiting to hear what the DITA TC decides.
 
I would like to ask that question
to the specialists of topic based authoring. What has more weight:
- a topic is a unit of information
that is meaningfull when it stands alone
- a section in a topic is not
alowed to contain sections
 
Chris Kravogel
 
 
SeicoDyne GmbH
Eichenstrasse 16
CH-6015 Reussbühl
Switzerland
Tel: +41 41 534 66 97
Mob: +41 78 790 66 97
Skype: seicodyne
 
www.seicodyne.com
christian.kravogel@seicodyne.com
 
Member of the DITA Technical Committee
Chairman of the DITA Machine Industry
Subcommittee

---

Von: Michael Priestley [mailto:mpriestl@ca.ibm.com]
Gesendet: Dienstag, 30. Oktober 2007 14:34
An: Grosso, Paul
Cc: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Betreff: RE: [dita] Groups - DITA Proposed Feature #12021: Nesting
sections (12021.html) uploaded


My recollection is that it was primarily for use in creating regular groupings
of sections or of content under sections for specialization purposes. This
was the use case for Novartis that Chris brought forward, and also the
use case from Paul Prescod who co-designed the original proposal.

For example, with these extra levels, you can model something like:

<messagebody> 
<problem> (from section) 
<userresponse> (from bodydiv) 
        <analysis> (from section)
        <recovery> 
... 
etc. 

There were some more complex use cases modeled in the original note series
with Paul Prescod I believe. 

I think where people need to model freely titled nested divisions, the
answer continues to be nesting topics rather than nesting sections - to
try to prevent the bloating of topics into whole chapters or books of content
(losing the constraints on topic size/complexity that are among the distinctions
between DITA and DocBook). But where additional levels of organization
are needed within a topic that do not represent new ideas or topics (and
thus do not require new unique headings), I think this proposal gives the
specializer considerably more freedom - as well as providing a general
mechanism for grouping sections or blocks for the sake of conreffing a
mixed range or for simplified conditional processing/metadata.

Michael Priestley
Lead IBM DITA Architect 
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25

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

10/30/2007 09:12 AM

To	<dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
cc
Subject	RE: [dita] Groups - DITA Proposed Feature #12021:  Nesting sections (12021.html)   uploaded

I was a little surprised to see this suggesting a bodydiv/sectiondiv
element but still not allowing sections to nest, which is what I
thought was meant by nesting sections.

I thought one of the drivers of this requirement was to be able
to model DocBook's nested sections more easily, but with the
suggested model, this would be even harder.

What are the benefits of this suggested model over simply allowing
section to contain section?

paul

> -----Original Message-----
> From: jim.earley@flatironssolutions.com 
> [mailto:jim.earley@flatironssolutions.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, 2007 October 30 7:15
> To: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: [dita] Groups - DITA Proposed Feature #12021: 
> Nesting sections (12021.html) uploaded
> 
> This is the HTML version of proposal 12021
> 
>  -- Mr. Jim Earley
> 
> The document named DITA Proposed Feature #12021:  Nesting sections
> (12021.html) has been submitted by Mr. Jim Earley to the OASIS Darwin
> Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC document repository.
> 
> Document Description:
> 
> 
> View Document Details:
> http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/document.php
> ?document_id=25904
> 
> Download Document:  
> http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/download.php
> /25904/12021.html


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