Re: [dita-learningspec] Proposal: New Base Class for all L&TInteraction Elements

[Eliot Kimber <ekimber@reallysi.com>]

On 7/17/09 1:22 PM, "john_hunt@us.ibm.com" <john_hunt@us.ibm.com> wrote:

> now sorry I brought up the common elements in base...
> 
> Maybe we keep it simple.

Yes, I think so.

> sounds like the real issue gets addressed by the single new base element
> for grouping the interactions. then if you specialize from the
> learningDomain, you get those common elements and each of the 7
> interactions, too.
> 
> if you want to branch off into your own set from that base, you can do
> that freely without any incumberances from the common elements

The thing to keep in mind is that you can mix in types from different
domains simply by how you define your extensions in your shell DTDs.

I think that if we were doing this design two years ago, there's no question
that the common elements would be in the base module.

The only reason for not doing it now is the change to class hierarchy, which
is only a problem if there are existing processors that both key on the new
values and would be different to change to reflect a change in the spec.

I suspect that in fact there are very few such processors and one would hope
that any checks are concentrated in a few places in the code.

But without the ability to poll the current implementors, there's no way to
know for sure, so we have to err on the side of minimal breakage.

Cheers,

E.

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Eliot Kimber | Senior Solutions Architect | Really Strategies, Inc.
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