Re: [dita-comment] The short description and searching

[Eliot Kimber <ekimber@rsicms.com>]

I don't know, but that's really outside the DITA purview. The DITA spec can
only say things about DITA source. How you might enable a "shortdesc search"
in an HTML output (or any other output) is necessarily an implementation
detail that the DITA standard has no way to say anything about except
possibly as a non-normative note.

But even then, there is no standard for how DITA content might be expressed
as HTML, so even a non-normative note could only be in terms of one way one
might generate HTML from DITA source.

Cheers,

E.

On 7/5/12 3:57 PM, "Guy K. Haas" <guy@hiskeyboard.com> wrote:

> Thanks, Eliot--
> 
> Yes, there's search among DITA topics in a CMS, and there's search in the
> delivered outputs.
> 
> But how does a search engine looking at a web page or a PDF even know that
> a sequence of words IS from a shortdesc?
> 
> --Guy
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, July 5, 2012 1:42 pm, Eliot Kimber wrote:
>> I interpret that to mean that in a retrieval context you would give higher
>> weight to matches on shortdescs than matches on content in the body or in
>> nested topics.
>> 
>> It also suggests a "find text in shortdescs" search option in a CMS or
>> retrieval system.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> Eliot
>> 
>> On 7/5/12 3:21 PM, "Guy K. Haas" <guy@hiskeyboard.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> In this sentence from the DITA 1.2 description of shortdesc
>>> 
>>>      The short description, which represents the purpose or theme of the
>>> topic, is also intended to be used as a link preview and for
>>> searching.
>>> 
>>> what does "for searching" mean?
>>> 
>>> I know that a <shortdesc> text is supposed to be the blurb that appears
>>> in
>>> a search engine's results.  But the only way I can conceive of
>>> <shortdes>c
>>> to "be used ... for searching" is that, when the topic is published as
>>> HTML, the <shortdesc> text is output in the HTML <abstract> element
>>> (unless a larger <abstract> is in the topic's metadata, in which case
>>> THAT
>>> is used).
>>> 
>>> Is that what the "for searching" means?  What about other file types,
>>> such
>>> as PDF?
>>> 
>>> --Thanks,
>>>       Guy
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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>> 
>> --
>> Eliot Kimber
>> Senior Solutions Architect, RSI Content Solutions
>> "Bringing Strategy, Content, and Technology Together"
>> Main: 512.554.9368
>> www.rsicms.com
>> www.rsuitecms.com
>> Book: DITA For Practitioners, from XML Press,
>> http://xmlpress.net/publications/dita/practitioners-1/
>> 
>> 
> 
> 

-- 
Eliot Kimber
Senior Solutions Architect, RSI Content Solutions
"Bringing Strategy, Content, and Technology Together"
Main: 512.554.9368
www.rsicms.com
www.rsuitecms.com
Book: DITA For Practitioners, from XML Press,
http://xmlpress.net/publications/dita/practitioners-1/