FW: [dita-adoption] Differences between specs and DTDs

["Kristen Eberlein" <keberlein@sdl.com>]

I am forwarding Jang's e-mail, since it mentions a place where the DITA 1.2
DTDs and spec are not in synch.


Best regards,
Kris
Kristen James Eberlein l DITA Architect and Technical Specialist l SDL
Structured Content Technologies Division l (t) + 1 (919) 682-2290 l
keberlein@sdl.com

Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail



-----Original Message-----
From: jang@jang.nl [mailto:jang@jang.nl] 
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 6:50 AM
To: dita-adoption@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [dita-adoption] Differences between specs and DTDs

Hello everyone,

After a long period of minding other business and riding a motorbike across
the USA, I am back on the DITA adoption track and writing feature articles
for Machinery-related stuff. I stumble across inconsistencies between the
DTDs and the language specs document released in December. Not sure if this
has been discussed before - in that case a pointer to that discussion would
be appreciated.

This is about the general task introduced in DITA 1.2. In the specs for
<task> and <taskbody> it is stated that the new general task model allows
multiple instances and orders for each element within taskbody. This is
reinforced by a note in the <steps> element description, where it is stated
that multiple <steps> elements can be included in the same task. In the DTDs
however, this is not implemented:

<!ENTITY % taskbody.content
                       "(((%prereq;) | 
                          (%context;) |
                          (%section;))*,
                         ((%steps; | 
                           %steps-unordered; |
                           %steps-informal;))?, 
                         (%result;)?, 
                         (%example;)*, 
                         (%postreq;)*)"

There is an extra set of brackets around the <steps>, <steps-unordered>,
<steps-informal> set of elements  which do not seem to have any meaning. If
the DTDs are leading, the specs are wrong in multiple locations. If the specs
are leading, the DTD should show an asterisk or a plus (depending on whether
a taskbody without any steps should be allowed or not).

I am including a short description of the relaxation in the task model in my
feature article on the machinery task, as it is quite essential, so I would
like to clear this point up.

Greetings from Amsterdam

Jang