Re: [dita] Proposal for Consideration: Default Behavior for ListItems

[Eliot Kimber <ekimber@reallysi.com>]

I'd like to point out a few things that make any arguments around the markup
design essentially moot:

1. The base DITA content models are *NOT* authoring models and cannot be.
They are the models needed to enable an appropriate range of specializations
and/or local markup practices. That means that, for example, list items
*must* allow both PCDATA content and block elements. As has been pointed
out, that doesn't mean that all users of DITA have to allow them, but the
standard as published has to allow it.

NOTE: There are many places in the current DITA design where it is over
constrained. Some of these have been addressed in 1.2, some cannot be
corrected until 2.0.

2. DITA is not just for technical documentation, so arguments along the
lines of "this is not good technical documentation practice" or "technical
documents don't need it" are out of order and should be avoided in any
discussion of base DITA content models. In the context of a techdoc-specific
specializations, they are perfectly fine. But base DITA (e.g., topic and the
core modules) are not technical documentation specific.

3. Backward compatibility requirements in 1.x mean that even if we thought
the content model should be more constrained, it can't be.

Jeff O. correctly expressed my original concern, namely, should the spec be
clear on what the *default* presentation expectation is for list items with
and without initial block containers. We still need to answer that question.
I submitted proposed language and am waiting for the opportunity to move
that we vote on it.

Cheers,

E.


----
Eliot Kimber | Senior Solutions Architect | Really Strategies, Inc.
email:  ekimber@reallysi.com <mailto:ekimber@reallysi.com>
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