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

[Mark Giffin <mark@markgiffin.com>]

On 4/1/2017 6:41 AM, Alan Houser wrote:

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.

Hi Alan, on this point, there are quite a few differences between full DITA <topic> and lwdita <topic>. In lwdita many elements are missing, and many content models are much simpler (%common-inline; %all-inline; %list-blocks; %fig-blocks; etc.).

I'm sure it would be useful to cover these differences explicitly. It's not terribly easy to dig through the DTDs and compare.

Mark Giffin

-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 Strategist

Digital Aviation Learning & Development 

Jeppesen  |  Digital Aviation  |  Boeing

55 Inverness Drive East | Englewood, CO 80112 | www.jeppesen.com

 

This document contains only administrative, uncontrolled data under U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

 

 

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=""true" href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Puffin&d=DwMGaQ&c=P3aKjizb3qsxp0SERaL2sw&r=YQWdLfM9mekBOdoMmoBdn9RgyqIHrveGolBbb4_uGWQ&m=_gxDTqDuIfgVP3SrcyvNfG75vdB8BhCXroxjCuw2G8o&s=t8AE1EtSkwWE3xSeLfMT3PM824jsb7kkYlvIz0iQuQA&e=">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=""true" href="http://example.com/changes-to-this-topic.log">http://example.com/changes-to-this-topic.log"/>
<data name="previous-version" href=""true" href="http://example.com/versionX.log">http://example.com/versionX.log"/>
<data name="from-collection" href="" moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://example.com/collection/">"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
E-mail: robander@us.ibm.com Digital Services Group
11501 BURNET RD,, TX, 78758-3400, AUSTIN, USA