Re: [dita] Need Clarification on Implications of Different List Markup Patterns

[Gershon L Joseph <gershon@tech-tav.com>]

Hi Erik,

 

This is certainly interesting, and I like the idea of demonstrating constraints this way. I'd prefer to call these topics something other than "simple", since that may scare authors off to use the base "complex/confusing/loose" DTDs instead. I'd like to brain-storm this idea further...
 

Gershon

----- Original Message ----
From: Erik Hennum <ehennum@us.ibm.com>
To: Gershon L Joseph <gershon@tech-tav.com>
Cc: dita@lists.oasis-open.org; Eliot Kimber <ekimber@reallysi.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 5:48:38 PM
Subject: Re: [dita] Need Clarification on Implications of Different List Markup Patterns

Hi, Gershon:

Would it make sense for core DITA 1.2 to include a simplifying constraint module (for instance, limiting nesting for some blocks) and to provide some parallel shells (conceptSimple, taskSimple, etc) that apply those constraints?

That might meet the concern you identify below and illustrate constraints.


Hoping that's interesting,


Erik Hennum
ehennum@us.ibm.com


Gershon L Joseph <gljoseph@yahoo.com> wrote on 02/12/2008 07:37:17 AM:

> I still feel that the DITA spec should provide a loose set of DTDs
> for users to specialize from, but that it should also provide a
> tight set of DTDs that authors can use out of the box. IMO the
> current base topic DTDs are too loose to be useful. The sad fact is
> we see tons of users applying bad markup -- effectively marking up
> their DITA XML content the way they applied styles in Word or FrameMaker.