Re: [dita] Why There are Constraints on Conref

[ekimber <ekimber@reallysi.com>]

On 9/24/09 9:09 AM, "Ogden, Jeff" <jogden@ptc.com> wrote:

> Isn't the real problem here the inability to include the same DITA topic
> type more than once with different constraints (or different domains or
> different topic nesting) in a Ditabase?  And isn't that limitation due
> to limitations about what can be done using DTDs?  Would the limitation
> go away if we could use XSDs rather than DTDs? Wouldn't removing the
> limitation be a better long term solution for this issue?  It seems sad
> to have to live with the limitation if a better solution exists using
> XSDs.
> 
> I'm pretty sure that no matter what we do now in terms of what we
> include in DITA 1.2 and how much we try to explain this, that these
> issues are going to cause confusion for a lot of people as long as the
> limitation with Ditabases remains.

XSDs would not allow you to have two different <topic> elements with
different models because in DITA all element types are global, which means a
given element type has exactly one content model.

But I think that suggesting you need to have different configurations of the
same topic type in a ditabase document is a red herring: setting up
different ditabase configurations is easy and you could have any number of
different ditabase DTDs for holding different topic types, if that was
useful.

The issue is really one of rules inherent in the conref mechanism and the
need for DITA to ensure interoperability and interchange.

If you don't care about interoperability or interchange, use DocBook, which
has no such features. Do what you want, and eat all the cost of doing it.

Cheers,

E.


----
Eliot Kimber | Senior Solutions Architect | Really Strategies, Inc.
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