Differences between specs and DTDs

[jang@jang.nl]

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