Re: [dita] Finding descriptions of DITA attributes

[Doug Morrison <dmorrison@dita4all.com>]

Title: Finding descriptions of DITA attributes

Hi Su-Laine,

I completely agree with you. Perhaps this could be a priority item for the improvements to OASIS-sponsored DITA adoption websites.

(Thank you for not suggesting changing all attribute names to something unusual like "xtrf". I have a strong suspicion that some nitpickers would regard this as a substantive change to the DITA 1.2 draft! ;) )

Regards,

Doug Morrison
Information Architect
http://dita4all.com

On 14/10/2010 01:41, Su-Laine Yeo wrote:

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Hi everyone,

(Please note that this is not a request to change the DITA 1.2 draft :) )

It has come to my attention that if you are trying to understand the purpose of a particular DITA attribute, the language reference leaves something to be desired. If you want to know more about a particular element, there is an alphabetical list of elements. For attributes, there is no alphabetical list, and the documentation is in organized according to what the attributes are used for. So you sort of have to already know something about what an attribute is used for in order to find out what it is used for.

Doing a plain-text search on the attribute name is useful, if circuitous, for attributes with odd names like "xtrf". It is a lot less useful for attributes with English names like "base".

A hyperlinked alphabetical list of DITA attributes would be very helpful. Does anyone know of a quick way to generate one?

Regards,

Su-Laine

Su-Laine Yeo
Solutions Consultant

JustSystems Canada, Inc.
Office: 778-327-6356
syeo@justsystems.com

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