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Subject: RE: DOCBOOK-APPS: Help project structure
Dave Pawson: >Hence the question. Is it truly a topic (DITA wise) if its not standalone? Punting to the DITA FAQ: "A topic is a chunk of information organized around a single subject. Structurally, it is a title followed by text and images, optionally organized into sections. Topics can be of many different types, the most common being concepts, tasks, and reference." So, technically, no, a topic doesn't need to be standalone to be a topic. But from the same FAQ, for the question "Why topics?": "DITA is based on topics because they are the optimal size to allow reuse in different delivery contexts without affecting a writer's efficiency. If we choose a smaller unit, the writer needs to check the unit in all its contexts to make sure that information flows correctly. If we choose a larger unit, the information cannot be easily reassembled into structures that different delivery contexts (such as a Web site or a book) require. A topic is large enough to be self contained from a writer's point of view but small enough to reuse effectively in whatever higher-level structure a particular delivery context requires." So while a topic in the DITA sense doesn't need to be standalone, part of the point of topics is that they are reusable, in a way that smaller or larger units aren't. Sum: - transitional text is definitely too small and context-specific to be appropriately treated as a topic. - so, in a hypothetical map that allowed transitional text, the generic process for topic references would be inappropriate, and you'd need special treatment for the "glue" (which, unlike the topics, might as well be content of the map, since it won't be particularly reusable anywhere else). By the way, apologies to the DocBook folks - I don't mean to appropriate this list's focus. It probably makes sense to continue this in xml-doc, if there's interest in continuing. Michael Priestley DITA Specialization Architect mpriestl@ca.ibm.com Dept 833 IBM Canada t/l: 969-3233 phone: 905-413-3233 Toronto Information Development
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