RE: [dita] DITA "givens" to document

["Paul Grosso" <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

> From: Don Day [mailto:dond@us.ibm.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, 2004 August 25 14:31
> To: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: [dita] DITA "givens" to document 
>  
> PIs: The normal DITA vocabularies do not specify Processing
> Instructions, and any PIs in DITA instances are normally
> ignored in standard DITA processing.

I agree, but I'd also like to make it clear that a DITA processing
agent should just be able to ignore PIs.  That is, there is nothing
wrong with DITA content having PIs in them.  (This should be obvious,
since PIs are just part of XML, but it seems some processors and users
get upset when they see PIs in the files, and I'd like to be clear that
there is nothing wrong with this.)

> Whitespace: whitespace in DITA instances follows usual XML rules
> unless a processor is otherwise advised by the use of xml:space
> fixed attributes in the language declarations.

Change "xml:space fixed attributes in the language declarations"
to "xml:space attributes."  They don't have to be fixed, and they
shouldn't have to be in declarations--they can be in any start tag.

> For the basic topic,
> this attribute defines "preserve" specifically for the elements
> "pre" and "lines". The preservation of non-significant whitespace
> (ie, tabs or linefeeds between elements in non-mixed-content models)
> is not required by DITA processing. However, content creation tools
> should respect the policies of content owners for the preservation
> of embedded non-significant whitespace (such as intentional
> pretty-printing offsets).

I don't know what is meant by the last sentence above.  If it's saying
that editors should maintain XML source file indentation, then I've got
a serious problem with this.  If you want to maintain source file
indentation, use Notepad.  XML-aware, structure-based content creation
is not compatible with maintaining the insignificant issues of the
markup.
(ESIS versus MSIS for those who have been around SGML long enough.)

I can go on for hours on this topic, but I figure I better ask for a
clarification first in case I'm just not understanding the issue here.

> Preservation of <!DOCTYPE...> artifacts; use of un-doctyped instances
> in DTD-based systems, etc..

This is a bit too terse for me--I'm not sure what is meant here.

paul