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

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

OK - so for legacy content that has
not been chunked into topics, they still want to enforce the one topic
per file constraint they have decided on, but without rewriting the content
to match?

The obvious option within the architecture
is to combine the "senseless small crumbs" into one file for
authoring, until it is ready to split out properly.

If the content doesn't fit the architecture,
you can either refactor the content, or the architecture. If they choose
to rework the architecture to support legacy content, is it easier/better
to change the definition of topic for all DITA users, or for Novartis to
relax their topic-nesting rule for legacy content?

I would like to go back to Novartis
and discuss this, if they are interested in another meeting. I'm quite
surprised by this requirement suddenly resurfacing, after I thought it
had been adequately addressed and reviewed with your client.

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

"SeicoDyne DITA" <dita@seicodyne.ch>

10/30/2007 10:43 AM

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

Yes Michael,
 
for the pilot they answered that
they will go with what is available. So it was no longer the case for them
in the pilot.
 
Nevertheless it will be a case
again when they go for the productive part, especially regarding legacy
data.
 
Maybe with new documents they
can find a way, but it seems that Novartis can not port existing documents
into a standard DITA structure without splitting the content into sensless
small crumbs. 
 
Chris

---

Von: Michael Priestley [mailto:mpriestl@ca.ibm.com]
Gesendet: Dienstag, 30. Oktober 2007 15:19
An: SeicoDyne DITA
Cc: dita@lists.oasis-open.org; 'Grosso, Paul'
Betreff: Re: AW: [dita] Groups - DITA Proposed Feature #12021: Nesting
sections (12021.html) uploaded


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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