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Subject: AW: AW: [dita] Groups - DITA Proposed Feature #12021: Nesting sections (12021.html) uploaded
- From: "SeicoDyne DITA" <dita@seicodyne.ch>
- To: "'Michael Priestley'" <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>
- Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 23:33:11 +0100
Hello Michael,
as promised have talked to some people from the
machinery industry regarding the nested sections issue. And it seems that most
point have been clearified. But may have now the opportunity to better explain
why some still insist of reflecting the need of some sort of nexted
sections.
This requirement is not connected to the planning of a
document but with the way some authors are used to work.
I have to state that many - even in the machinery
industry - totaly follow the one section level per topic concept and would never
leave that track. Especially people who are addicted to information
matting.
The wish of beeing able to split a section in
subsections is comming from authors who write documentation in which the degree
of complexity is growing while they are writing. It is always the same reason:
An author is planning a document, splits it into topics, nests topics as
required and starts to work. He/she writes the content of a topic, creates a
couple of sections. While writing the sections he/she recognizes, that the
structure is too flat and an additional level of hierarchy is
needed.
Of course, the author now can restructure the topic and
split the sections in separate topics to get the required structure. In theory
that is ok and would solve the problem, but practically, the author gets pretty
angry as restructuring a topic with a couple of sections into several topics
needs far more time than to work how he/she is used to work by just adding a
next level into the existing one.
And one point that may drive some crazy is the fact
that maybe from 7 sections only one needs a deeper structure. And then to split
that single topic in several to get the required nesting seems to be an overkill
for some authors.
Hope I was able to reflect what challanges these
people.
I fully agree, this is still a question of planning
and this requirement should not challange us. But I just try to
reflect what I hear from the field.
Best regards
Chris
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
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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