Public Comment

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Comment from: Mark_Nazimova@ibi.com

Name: Mark Nazimova
Title: Information Architect
Organization: Information Builders
Regarding Specification: DITA / ditaval scope

I've already posted this in dita-users, but as someone pointed out, it might be appropriate to formally submit the request to the TC.

I don't see a way to set selection attribute actions (include, exclude, flag) within the scope of a topic or topic hierarchy; ditaval only seems to allow for setting them for an entire build.  I know that this issue has been raised before (e.g., http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users/message/1713).  

Can the Technical Committee consider adding support for applying condition actions in a more finely-grained way, perhaps using a map?

I need this for those of our manuals that set conditions to chapter-specific values.  For example, in a server installation guide, each chapter describes how to install the server on a different platform.  Some of the content is conditionalized to enable reuse in multiple chapters.    

We reset the the condition values accordingly. For example, the PLATFORM condition:

*   Is set to WINDOWS in Ch. 2 
*   Is set to UNIX in Ch. 3

The size and complexity of the conditional content varies; this is not a situation that lends itself to using variables.  I don't think conrefs to build-specific files, or keyref, are solutions. 

Thanks.