Re: [dita] <data> use practice question: @value and content?

["Don Day (LbyW)" <donday@learningbywrote.com>]

I'm inclined to agree with you--the only processible intent for the data element is the meaning you give it in its specialization, after all. If there are likely to be more than one date, I'd have a grouping data container whose @value="isodate", containing the one or more instance strings in specialized data elements having an attribute that logs the instance format or other meta about the representations.

Don R. Day

DITA and XML Consultant, Learning by Wrote
Co-Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee

"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"

--T.S. Eliot

On 1/9/2012 2:53 PM, Eliot Kimber wrote:

For a client I need to capture dates where the date as original authored
could be e.g. "Monday Dec 6, 2011". I need to retain the date as authored
but also need to capture a machine-processible date string, e.g., an ISO
date.

The date is metadata for the topic so I'm capturing it using <data> within
the topic prolog.

My initial instinct is to use the <data> content for the original string and
@value for the machine-processible date.

My question: is this use of both @value and direct content condoned by DITA?

I reviewed the reference entry for <data> and didn't see anything that
suggested one way or the other.

The alternative would be to have to two <data> instances, one for the
display date and one for the normalized date, but I was hoping to avoid that
since it's semantically the same date, just represented as two different but
equivalent strings.

Cheers,

E.