Re: [dita-lightweight-dita] Does <data> need @href?

[Carlos Evia <cevia@vt.edu>]

Dear all,

I agree with Alan. Let's make this an agenda item for Monday's meeting.

I think we aim to please in the LwDITA SC and I am super guilty of this: when one of our members or an actual user contacts me and asks for a feature using the "but DITA 1.3 has it" (the equivalent of "but mom lets me eat candy before dinner"), I tend to feel guilty and try to accommodate. 

As Alan says, that could really make LwDITA (we are mainly talking about XDITA here) bloated and very, seriously distant from the simplicity of its sisters HDITA and MDITA.

That's why I fear the monsters that people could create with the template-based specialization under the LwDITA umbrella: Look at my spaghetti topic with 25 custom elements... which I created from an XDITA base, so it is lightweight and certified!

So, bring your ideas to Monday's call!

New campaign slogan: Keep LwDITA lightweight... oh lord...

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

On Fri, Mar 31, 2017 at 9:17 AM, Alan Houser <arh@groupwellesley.com> wrote:

Hi Rob/Ian,

Your use cases are valid. But I think both are narrow enough that one should use full DITA to meet these requirements, even in the presence of a LwDITA alternative.

I take this position because of my perception that the "Lightweight" portion of Lightweight DITA is at general risk from feature creep.

-Alan

On 3/31/17 8:46 AM, Rob Hanna wrote:

In my opinion, the @href is quite useful as the semantic that states what the data’s @name and @value applies to. It can apply to an external or internal resource. For example

• To relate a topic to an external resource for pulling in the latest pricing for a widget
  • @name = “msrp”
  • @value = “widget_canada”
  • @href = "" href="http://widgetRUS.salesforce.com/pricelist" target="_blank">http://widgetRUS.salesforce.com/pricelist
• To relate a piece of data to an element within the topic itself
  • @name = “correction”
  • @value = “Changed the trade name used for the Widget sold in Canada”
  • @href = "">012345”

 

Arguably, the @href value can be inserted using a nested data element. Still I believe that the semantic relevance of @href in data is very useful.

 

Cheers,

Rob Hanna

 

 

From: dita-lightweight-dita@lists.oasis-open.org [mailto:dita-lightweight-dita@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Alan Houser
Sent: March 31, 2017 5:21 AM
To: dita-lightweight-dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [dita-lightweight-dita] Does <data> need @href?

 

Gently pushing back on this ... if "is it in DITA 1.3?" were the test for inclusion in Lw-DITA, well ...

What can an @href attribute accomplish that @name/@value cannot? I acknowledge that @href has processing implications in full DITA. If that's the driving requirement here, I can accept that. But (generally), if one can meet a requirement in Lw-DITA with more general/extensible markup (in this case, @name/@value), I would favor punting the more specific markup.

-Alan