Nice, Carlos. May I ask what keyword in MDITA indicates the task
type?
This got me thinking about the dictation-oriented approach I had
tried awhile back for tasks. I coded your example using my
dictation notation, and without adapting the parser for ol
awareness, I still got a reasonable result:
The point of mentioning this is that a styles-based approach for
describing semantic information types can be compatible with DITA.
The question is whether this falls into scope or not. It is out of
scope in the sense of having no traction at the moment; it is in
scope in that we demonstrate here that it works in concept, and the
principle of styles-based schemas may be of interest as a way to
support DITA awareness in a word processor (or dictation scenario;
this could totally be done as an app on a smart phone, with more
verbal editor controls added to the syntax--'up two; delete' for
example) (or drag and drop chunks in an HTML interface).
Dear all,
As I was working on the outline for our LwDITA spec,
I noticed in our current version we only have a generic topic.
We are not, as you all probably know, pushing for default
specialized content types. This means LwDITA does not come, in
this first version, with concept, task, reference,
troubleshooting, and glossary.
However, all our LwDITA examples so far (from the
STC paper and our DITA NA presentations from 2015 and 2016)
assume that in HDITA and MDITA there will be concept, task, and
reference types... but... that would be a mess for XDITA. If
there are no specialized types in the spec, then we do not need
custom elements in HTML5, as Michael's original HDITA model uses
existing HTML5 tags (article, section, ul, ol, etc.). Jarno’s
plugins for XDITA and HDITA also assume we will have concept,
task, and reference, but the implementation is problematic.
I present here a recipe for Marinara sauce (borrowed
from a Sarah O'Keefe XML example) in what we currently have for
XDITA, HDITA, and MDITA. As you can see, the markup is very
simple in all cases, and then our concerns should be the
following:
- Reuse for XDITA and HDITA... keys, conrefs...
whatever we need
- Topic-level metadata (prolog equivalent) in XDITA
and HDITA. I am using YAML headers in my examples, but Don
pointed out that they duplicate the "title" element I already
have in the H1. Should we use YAML or JSON?
- Specialization by template in the LwDITA model. We
are only allowing that in XDITA, right??
This makes life way easier for HDITA and XDITA. Some
people at conferences have asked me if LwDITA will allow any
well-formed HTML5 or Markdown file to play as HDITA or MDITA,
and I think we can propose that. Please let me know if this is
crazy.
Here are the examples:
In XDITA,
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD LW DITA
Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
<topic id="t-marinara">
<title>Marinara sauce</title>
<prolog>
<data>Some sort of metadata for author and
type??? What is allowed in the XDITA prolog?</data>
</prolog>
<body>
<p>Prepare a crowd-pleasing red sauce for
pasta in about 30 minutes.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>2 tbsp. of olive
oil</p></li>
<li><p>2 cloves of garlic,
minced</p></li>
<li><p>1/2 tsp. of hot red
pepper</p></li>
<li><p>28 oz. of canned tomatoes,
preferably San Marzano</p></li>
<li><p>2 tbsp. of parsley,
chopped</p></li>
</ul>
<ol>
<li><p>Heat olive oil in a large
saucepan on medium</p></li>
<li><p>Add garlic and hot red
pepper and sweat until fragrant</p></li>
<li><p>Add tomatoes, breaking up
into smaller pieces</p></li>
<li><p>Simmer on medium-low heat
for at least 20 minutes</p></li>
<li><p>Add
parsley</p></li>
<li><p>Simmer for another five
minutes</p></li>
<li><p>Serve over long
pasta.</p></li>
</ol>
</body>
</topic>
------------------------
In HDITA,
---
author: Unknown
tags:
- Italian
---
<article id="t-marinara">
<h1>Marinara sauce</h1>
<p>Prepare a crowd-pleasing red sauce for
pasta in about 30 minutes.</p>
<ul>
<li>2 tbsp. of olive oil</li>
<li>2 cloves of garlic, minced</li>
<li>1/2 tsp. of hot red pepper</li>
<li>28 oz. of canned tomatoes, preferably
San Marzano</li>
<li>2 tbsp. of parsley, chopped</li>
</ul>
<ol>
<li>Heat olive oil in a large saucepan on
medium</li>
<li>Add garlic and hot red pepper and sweat
until fragrant</li>
<li>Add tomatoes, breaking up into smaller
pieces</li>
<li>Simmer on medium-low heat for at least
20 minutes</li>
<li>Add parsley</li>
<li>Simmer for another five
minutes</li>
<li>Serve over long pasta.</li>
</ol>
</article>
--------------------------------
In MDITA,
---
author: Unknown
tags:
- Italian
---
# Marinara Sauce {#t-marinara}
Prepare a crowd-pleasing red sauce for pasta in
about 30 minutes.
- 2 tbsp. of olive oil
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1/2 tsp. of hot red pepper
- 28 oz. of canned tomatoes, preferably San
Marzano
- 2 tbsp. of parsley, chopped
1. Heat olive oil in a large saucepan on medium
2. Add garlic and hot red pepper and sweat until
fragrant
3. Add tomatoes, breaking up into smaller pieces
4. Simmer on medium-low heat for at least 20
minutes
5. Add parsley
6. Simmer for another five minutes
7. Serve over long pasta.
Best,
Carlos
--
Carlos Evia, Ph.D.
Director of Professional and Technical
Writing
Associate Professor of Technical
Communication
Department of English
Center for Human-Computer Interaction
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061-0112
(540)200-8201