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Subject: Q&A from DITA Briefing #1 (Intro to DITA) -- 5/25/2004
DITA Briefing #1, "Intro to DITA" -- 2004-05-25 Questions and Answers DD: indicates Don Day MP: indicates Michael Priestley Sharon -- - Question about titles -- are they part of the content or the metadata? - MP: Titles are content of topics, but DITA topic content also provides <titlealts> which includes navtitle and searchtitle, which are effectively metadata in that they are optionally available for application roles that the content title is less suitable for. An example might be a shorter navtitle to fit a known width constraint in a left-hand navigation pane, or a search title that includes a product name in order to match expected search strategies. Scott Tsao -- - Reuse of design, reuse of content, reuse of processing -- just wanted a clarification of what that means. His understanding was already correct. - Does DITA restrict you to XSLT for processing? - MP: No, but Michael does like it; it fits well with DITA. DITA was originally designed to work specifically with the W3C-based processing architecture, including CSS, XSLT, XSL-FO, XLink, and so forth. For your topics to be interoperable with other DITA users, any processing based on other tools should nevertheless have similar behaviors for specialization (class-based lookup, safe fallthrough to base classes, conref resolution, etc.) - When you talk about reuse of design, content, and processing, does that mean reuse of Schema components, of instance content, and of XSLT routines? - MP: Yes to all. - Confused when MP says he wants to use the map to capture the metadata, whereas the topic itself doesn't need to carry the metadata. - MP: You can author the metadata in either place. You get the most reuse possibilities when it's outside the topic. It is designed to be additive. - If I have a set of components I want to standardize, and one of them is reused in many places and I want to store it in a library, would I create a topic for the definition? - MP: This is more of a best practice question: how should new specializations make use of the various levels of design reuse and content reuse in DITA? For example, in a glossary application, should the new design be based on definition list or on nested concepts? Either would work. Michael favors reuse at the topic level for this, but the right design will probably depend on other design factors that will differ between communities. DITA's features (map, topic, conref, etc.) enable a wide number of information architectures to be incorporated; community agreement will be the most important factor in defining how/whether that IA interoperates with other information architectures. Wading a bit deeper here, the value of a topic-based set of definitions is that the topic specializations can be very specific, providing support for etymology, pronunciation, synonums, usage, etc.. Upon output, only the basic term/def can be output to a specialized definition list that serves as an output-specific view of the separately maintained topic-based definitions. There are many cases of use-driven differences in how common structures might be supported in specializations. Call-center issues (topic level) can be abstracted into QandA lists (FAQs), message definitions (topic level) can be abstracted into message sets for conversion into resource bundles, etc.. Padma Neppalli (Intel) -- - How do you refer to something that's buried somewhere inside a topic? - MP: Most DITA elements have an ID attribute and a conref attribute. You can reuse content from an element with an ID by pointing to it from another element of the same type with a conref attribute. - DD: Reuse is not only topic-to-topic but also within a topic. - When are conrefs validated? - MP: At build-time, when you create the output tranform. Also note: "valid" means more than just "is the content ok to copy over" - it checks whether the rules are the same in both places - i.e., you can only reuse a paragraph from someplace where paragraphs are valid, and you can only reuse paragraphs that have the same element content rules. This will be explained in more depth in a later presentation. - DD: Editing tools often will show you broken links also. It can tell you whether or not you are pointing to a valid conref, and helps you select only valid content. Similar to ID/IDREF which does not work well in a cross-document architecture like DITA. Eric from BMC Software -- - How does DITA create the equivalent of an index? - DD: DITA topics contain an index term element. They can be nested for creating hierarchical indexes. - MP: The public tool doesn't include indexing tools, but the markup is there. MP thinks it's better to do the indexing on the map level -- it's easier to control index design. - DD: But if you put the index data into individual elements, they can be picked up wherever those elements are conref'd. - MP: This means you can't get rid of them when you need to. Main point is that indexing is something you do in terms of a collection of topics - your choice of first and second level headings is determined by the size and subjects of your topics. If these choices are embedded in your content, then your content will create bad index entries when it is reused in a new context. IBM still relies upon their SGML indexing tools -- they convert backwards to SGML whenever they need an index, and use those tools to create an index. Obviously this isn't helpful to anyone else, and MP is hoping that DITA-based transforms for indexing will be available at some point. There *is* a full indexing ability, just not fully implemented. - Elliot Kimber: Index processing that's part of the DocBook XSLT can probably be ported to DITA with minimal effort. - DD: Reusing legacy processes -- If you already have a legacy processor, you can port DITA backwards to it so you don't lose that tool. Thus what MP presented as a potential shortcoming might be a benefit for people who have useful legacy tools already working. - MP: Good point for the general rule about legacy compatibility. That said, indexing is a likely candidate for standard processing. Scott Tsao -- - Does anyone know about UDEF (a particular standard used by airlines) and a possible intersection/overlap with DITA? - DD: Eric knows about this -- let's take this to the mailing list. Mary Parmelee from SAS Institute -- - Are non-TC members invited to subsequent briefings? - DD: Yes. Go to the TC website for current information. Just let Don know if there will be a need for him to reserve additional lines, and try to call in from local conference rooms if possible to conserve lines. No more questions from the presentation. Keep an eye on the website for any changing news. ___________________________________________________________ Seraphim Larsen ICG Technical Publications Sr. Technical Writer Intel Corporation (480) 552-6504 Chandler, AZ The content of this message is my personal opinion only. Although I am an employee of Intel, the statements I make here in no way represent Intel's position on the issue, nor am I authorized to speak on behalf of Intel on this matter. ___________________________________________________________
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