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Subject: Comments from the DITA Awareness Group on LinkedIn on @navtitle Usage


Excepting comments from members of the TC (with one exception), here are the comments received as to whether people are still using @navtitle:


Torsti Koski (Konecranes): What is the harm if it is still available? What about @locktitle, is that going down too? Answer to the question, no, we are not using attribute, only the element.

Constant Gordon (formerly with NXP Semiconductor): I have never used it. But when considering dropping, how about compatibility with legacy DITA?

Stefan Eike (formerly with DAKOSY): We do not use the attribute. The attribute is deprecated for ages. Attributes should not contain textual information. It can easily be converted to an element by XSLT.

Merri Boylan (formerly with HERE): We had a rule in our DITA input that we had to use @navtitle, and it caused some kind of problem for some documents. So we removed the requirement. This was several years ago, so I don't remember the exact issue, except that the writers were glad to see it go (as opposed to the developers, who thought it was cool ... I guess.)

Janette Lynch (Veracode): Yes, we use it.

Boryana Genova (Guidewire Software): Yes, we use it for topicheads.
Michael Hayden (Wonderware InduSoft): I do use @navtitle and @locktitle, because <titlealts> often does not work as expected. If <titlealts> can be made to work as expected, then I wouldn't mind losing @navtitle and @locktitle.

Mike Kocik (Carestream Health): Yes, we use it to organize certain groups of topics for when they appear in the toc, for quicker viewing. For example, we may have dozens of topics that are titled, "Remove the Xyz"or "Install the Xyz." With @navtitle, we can list them as "Xyz-Remove" and "Xyz-Install" so that users can go down the toc and spot the component right away. (This is for our non-translated service content.)

Eric Petzoldt (Ingersoll Rand/Club Car): Similar to Mike, we use the navtitle attribute to modify our TOC verbiage versus our topic element title. It eliminates the repetition of the noun and leaves the reader with the verb for quick TOC navigation. For example: The topic may be "removal of the air filter" but the TOC will say "Removal" because the parent TOC heading (mapref) is "Air Filter". A reader would see Air Filter with Removal, Inspection, Cleaning, and Installation indented as child elements.

Nicholas Mucks (Dolby Laboratories): We tell writers to never use @navtitle because it can be confusing to readers and it adds overhead when writing docs.

Jamie Myles (Genetec, formerly IBM): Hello Keith, I can confirm that the Navtitle and Alttitle tags were used in IBM UK documentation teams when I was there.

Deborah Femia (Air Worldwide): Without topichead @navtitle, how do you create an organizational heading with no corresponding topic body content?

[Kristen James Eberlein: @Deborah You use a <navtitle> element, the content of which can be localized.]

Niels Grundtvig Nielsen (Worldline): I agree with Deborah Femia – especially when you're rescuing content from someone else's unstructured document, using a <navtitle> can make navigation (in print deliverables) clearer. It's an alternative to inventing glue text. (even if neither of them ought to be necessary in high-grade structured content)


Cheers!

 

-

Keith Schengili-Roberts
Market Researcher and DITA Evangelist
 
IXIASOFT 
825 Querbes, Suite 200, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H2V 3X1
tel  + 1 514 279-4942  /  toll free + 1 877 279-4942 




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