Scott and Robert have both articulated valid, compelling use cases. And I still believe support for those use cases should be limited to full DITA.
Going further, I think the SC needs to specify clear, defining distinctions between XDITA and full DITA, that will inform design decisions for XDITA. Examples might be (potential blasphemy coming) "XDITA does not support specialization. Or keys. Or XYZ". A use case distinction should really drive these decisions, but the use case distinction must be something more clear and compelling than "XDITA is a solution for organizations that need DITA but want fewer element types".
One source of my struggle with this issue ... it's really not very complicated to author in DITA <topic> with only the highlighting domain integrated. And that's what XDITA is starting to look like.
-Alan
On 3/31/17 10:57 AM, Scott Hudson wrote:
Additionally, we heard from several folks in the DITA listening sessions that they want the ability to associate common metadata with topics. Wouldn’t the @href allow that opportunity to link out to external metadata? If so, I think it should remain in both LW and full DITA.
Thanks and best regards,
--Scott
Scott Hudson
Content StrategistDigital Aviation Learning & Development
Jeppesen | Digital Aviation | Boeing
55 Inverness Drive East | Englewood, CO 80112 | www.jeppesen.com
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From: <dita-lightweight-dita@lists.
oasis-open.org> on behalf of Robert D Anderson <robander@us.ibm.com>
Date: Friday, March 31, 2017 at 8:53 AM
To: Carlos Evia <cevia@vt.edu>
Cc: "arh@groupwellesley.com" <arh@groupwellesley.com>, "dita-lightweight-dita@lists.oasis-open.org" <dita-lightweight-dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: Re: [dita-lightweight-dita] Does <data> need @href?
(Let's begin with my usual caveat about my years of focus on full DITA rather than lightweight, and then...)
The href attribute is pretty commonly used on <data> elements, with fairly straightforward use cases -- it either tells where the piece of metadata came from, or where to go to find more of it.
For example, I regularly seem to write sample topics about puffins. Anything based on a surprising fact from our favorite fact source might be tagged:
<data name="source" value="wikipedia" href="">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin "/>
For the few not writing about puffins, href really is the more semantic choice if you're trying to reference anything outside of the topic:
<prolog>
<data name="changelog" href="" href="http://example.com/changes-to-this-topic.log" target="_blank">http://example.com/changes-to-this-topic.log"/>
<data name="previous-version" href="">http://example.com/versionX.log "/>
<data name="from-collection" href="" class="m_4186287748853490002moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://example.com/collection/" target="_blank">"http://example.com/collection/"/>
</prolog>
Obviously with that sample, those are pairs, so you could use name + value. But if you were doing it in full DITA, and used @value for a reference like that, I think a lot of people would be shaking their heads and wondering why.
Anyway, if you're already going to have <data> available already this seems to be a pretty common use case for both full and LwDITA.
Regards,
Robert D. Anderson
DITA-OT lead and Co-editor DITA 1.3 specification,
Digital Services Group
11501 BURNET RD,, TX, 78758-3400, AUSTIN, USA
