Re: [dita-comment] <stepsection> useless

Hi Pierre,

The DITA TC discussed your email today in our regular meeting and asked that I summarize our discussion.

One of the purposes of <stepsection> is to provide the titling that you suggest as part of stepgroup in your message. It helps to break long steps up visually in situations where you donât want to nest tasks, which would result in each stepgroup starting over with a new number. As you mention, it is not a container for nested steps for that very reason, the list items (the steps) need to be numbered sequentially without consideration of the <stepsection> element and to do that, they must have the same parent. If the numbering is not an issue, then either Michaelâs suggestion or the steps/substeps mechanism works fine.

However, this does not prevent you from achieving your goal. I have many customers who use the <stepsection> element as the trigger for a table-like presentation of sets, exactly as you have described. A row starts when a <stepsection> is encountered. The <stepsection> includes the <image> and and hazardstatements associated with the group of steps and this information is placed in the first cell. The steps that follow, even though not nested, are placed in the second cell, until there is a trigger (another <stepsection>) to start the next row or the table ends with the </steps> element. If no content is in the <stepsection>, the steps that follow take the entire row, merging the cells together.

<steps>

</stepsection>

<step><cmd>This command is next to image1.</cmd></step>

<step><cmd>This command is next to image1.</cmd><step>

<step><cmd>This command is next to image 1</cmd><step>

</stepsection>

<step><cmd>This command is next to image2.</cmd></step>

<step><cmd>This command takes the full row because its preceding <stepsection> is empty.</cmd></step>

</stepsection>

<step><cmd>This command is next to image3.</cmd></step>

</steps>

Obviously, this requires your stylesheet to be set up to format the content in this way, but it has been done quite effectively by others. Feel free to contact me off line if you have questions about the mechanics.

Best regards,

Dawn

From: Pierre Attar <attar@tireme.fr>
Date: Friday, December 6, 2019 at 2:44 AM
To: Michael Priestley <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>
Cc: "dita-comment@lists.oasis-open.org" <dita-comment@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: Re: [dita-comment] <stepsection> useless

More deep explanation :

Yes, you can use nesting tasks but how to manage the difference between real nested tasks (a task that needs to be composed of a series of different tasks) and real stepgroups ?

This leads to the question of what is the real need ?

The best sample is what I often find in the layout of many documentation : a two columns table with, for each row :

- first cell : an image plus warnings

- second cell : a serie of steps all relates to the image.

I've no reason to define this as non respecting minimalist technical writing.

Pierre

Le 05/12/2019 Ã 17:21, Michael Priestley a Ãcrit :

Have you considered nesting tasks? Once each group of steps has its own title and introductory context, it may make sense to think of them as subtasks, rather than substeps.

Michael Priestley, Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM)
Taxonomy Specialist, Marketing Analytics
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com

From: Pierre Attar <attar@tireme.fr>
To: dita-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Date: 2019/12/05 08:12 AM
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [dita-comment] <stepsection> useless

Hi,

I've a request on the way steps are made for now : the <stepsection>
element is useless in most of the cases while it is not a container per se.

In fact, many different cases, the way TW are working is something like :

<stepgroup>
    <title>
    <image>, <note>, <etc.
    <step>
    <step>
    ...
</stepgroup>
<stepgroup>
    <title>
    <image>, <note>, <etc.
    <step>
    <step>
    ...
</stepgroup>

In the current DITA version, it is impossible to reproduce this
meachnism because the <stepsection> is only a specialization of <li>.

So the only way to do that is to use step and substeps.
But as semantics is implied, a step/cmd is not the same as a
stepgroup/title.

Any thoughts on the way to solve that I understand the difficulty as
<steps> derives from <ol> but there is may be an other derivation way to
solve that.

Regards Pierre

--
Pierre Attar (attar Ãt tireme point/dot fr)
Expert in Structured Document engineering
Expert en informatique documentaire
TirÃme SARL (http://www.tireme.fr)
# : +33 1 43 41 12 13

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Pierre Attar (attar Ãt tireme point/dot fr)

Expert in Structured Document engineering

Expert en informatique documentaire

TirÃme SARL (http://www.tireme.fr)

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