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Subject: RE: [dita] referencing a bookmap from a map
- From: Michael Priestley <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>
- To: "Ogden, Jeff" <jogden@ptc.com>
- Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:42:18 -0400
Hi Jeff,
For others following the discussion:
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/24910/IssueNumber12055.html
>I want the DITA TC to make
our expectations explicit when a generic map references a
>specialized map (or a generic
topicref references a specialized topicref). I hope we don’t
>end up just saying that
this behavior is undefined or implementation dependent, but even
>that would be better than
just being silent or ambiguous about what the expectation is.
>
>I am happy with the behaviors
prescribed in 12055.
>
>I don’t think that the
behaviors prescribed in 12055 always give results that conform to
>the expectations of the
referencing map’s DTD or schema. And that is fine with me.
>But in my view this weakens
the arguments that say that we should always generalize
>the top level elements
in the generic to specialized case to ensure that they conform.
I don't think it does weaken the argument.
We can always define specialized behaviors for specialized elements. The
question is what is the safest behavior to define as the default for unspecialized
elements that have no other behavior.
>And my thinking on the
question of references from generic to specialized maps has us
>maintaining as much information
as we can as part of the “processing” steps so that that
>information is available
during the “styling” steps. This allows users to make their own
>choices about what it is
they do or don’t expect and how they want to “style” any
>unexpected cases.
Returning to the questions of my previous
notes - if I fed to your processors a normalized DITA map that consisted
of three concatenated bookmaps, each with their own indexing and TOC behaviors
defined, how would your processors handle them? That's behavior that is
certainly not defined in the spec, because it is a content model that is
not achievable by following the spec.
I respect the instinct to preserve semantics
rather than discard them. However, if the preserved semantics can trigger
processing rules that will result in broken output, it seems irresponsible
to preserve those semantics without some kind of indication from the user
that specialized behavior is being engaged. An indication like, for example,
the creation of a specialized referencing element.
Michael Priestley, Senior Technical
Staff Member (STSM)
Lead IBM DITA Architect
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25
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