Re: [dita-help] The resourceid element vs the ua-context element

[Mark Poston <mark.poston@mekon.com>]

I am currently working on a number of solutions that require the use of the <resourceid> tag. These range from supporting the needs for both thin and fat client online help systems, to solutions where content is accessed via other means (such as scanning QR Codes on a large medical device).

Each of these solutions work in pretty much the same way. That is … given the map and a context ID I want to return a specific topic.

For the online help usage I sometimes require the same context-id to be defined but with different application names. For example:

<resourceid id="myContext" appname="myFirstTool"/>

<resourceid id="myContext" appname="mySecondTool"/>

Whilst being DTD-valid, using duplicate @id attribute values is not ideal, and the proposed @appid attribute would be a much better approach.

For me, the resourceid tag could be used in wider contexts that just UA requirements, and so I wonder if the addition of a UA-specific tag is perhaps not required.

This would leave the proposed @ua-window and @yield-to attributes. I need to review the @yield-to proposal some more so will leave that for now.

I wonder if @ua-window would be sufficiently supported if @outputclass were to be added to <resourceid>. Given that I have looked up a context id and the application name, it seems reasonable that I look in outputclass to tell me how to present the content in a window. Whilst outputclass can in theory be used for anything, its use with resourceid would, I think, be very specific and therefore worth considering.

As a new member to the DITA Help SC I apologise if what I am talking about has been previously covered, or if I have overlooked something glaringly obvious!!

Kind regards

Mark Poston

Senior Technical Consultant

Mekon Ltd.

Tel. +44 20 8722 8461

Mob +44 7515 906032

Skype mark_mekon.com

From: Tony Self <tself@hyperwrite.com>
Organization: HyperWrite Pty Ltd
Reply-To: Tony Self <tself@hyperwrite.com>
Date: Wednesday, 22 May 2013 10:31
To: "dita-help@lists.oasis-open.org" <dita-help@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: [dita-help] The resourceid element vs the ua-context element

Greetings colleagues

 

At the last DHSC meeting, I promised to circulate a brief comparison between the 1.3 resourceid proposal (13008), and our own context-sensitive help ua-context element.

 

	<resourceid>	<ua-context>
Inheritance	topic/resourceid	topic/ua-context
Contained by	prolog, topicmeta	prolog, topicmeta
Contains	No content	No content
Attributes:
	@id	@id
	@appid	@context-id
	@appname	@context-string
		@ua-window
		@yield-to (valid in map only)

 

The other implied attribute is that the identifier is a context hook. If we used resourceid, we would have to sacrifice one to the attributes, probably @appname, to identify the resourceid as a context hook as opposed to a database key or an application code.

 

It could well be that yield-to ends up not being required, because of other “attribute cascade” (branch filtering) suggestions being discussed at the TC level.

 

Rather than create a new ua-context element based on resourceid, we could look at expanding the 13008 proposal so that the resourceid element contained the following attributes:

 

@id

@appid

@context-id

@appname

@ua-window

@yield-to (if required)

 

Your thoughts and opinions on this would be very welcome!

 

Tony Self

Chair – OASIS DITA Help Subcommittee