dita message

Subject: Re: [dita] Two proposals for nested sections

From: Michael Priestley <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>
To: "Paul Prescod" <paul.prescod@blastradius.com>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 11:24:13 -0500

Paul,

Another alternative is to create an additional base type at the same level as topic that allows nested divisions. That way we don't affect the integrity of the topic architecture, but we give you the ability to design content with nested subheadings within the overall DITA architecture.

I'm thinking this would be conceptually something like an article or whitepaper - longer than a topic, may contain topics, but not in itself a topic. Note that we have been authoring articles in DITA just using nested topics (there are examples in the toolkit), and that will continue to be valid as well.

So:

<article id="xyz">
<title>A longer piece of content</title>
<shortdesc>We still have the same general DITA structure of a title, shortdesc, and body</shortdesc>
<articlebody>
<p>But we have one very important difference: instead of sections, we have divisions, and we allow them to nest.</p>
<division>
<title>Divisions</title>
<p>Divisions have a minimal structure consisting of an optional title followed by block-level content. They are not addressable directly by maps in the way articles or topics are, so in that respect they are more like sections, except that they nest.</p>
<topic id="abc">
<title>Topics</title>
<body>
<p>We also allow topics to be authored inside the body of the article, or pulled in via conref, so that articles can still contain and reuse topics. So articles can still consume topics, even though topics (being smaller) cannot consume articles.</p>
</body>
</topic>
</division>
</articlebody>
<related-links><link href=""somewhereelse.dita"/></related-links>
<article id="nestedarticle">
<title>A subarticle</title>
<shortdesc>We could even allow articles to nest, after the body - keeping articles separate from articles in the same way we keep topics separate from topics, that is by separating their content into different bodies.</shortdesc>
<articlebody><p>And so on...</p></articlebody>
</article>
</article>

Michael Priestley
IBM DITA Architect
SWG Classification Schema PDT Lead
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com

"Paul Prescod" <paul.prescod@blastradius.com>

11/06/2005 08:51 PM

To	<dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
cc
Subject	[dita] Two proposals for nested sections

Since your concern is preventing arbitrary nesting of narrative documents, two solutions present themselves: 1. Limit the nesting levels to some agreeable level that is "enough levels" to satisfy most customers wanting grouping and "not so many levels" as to support arbitrary narrative. This is truly a compromise in the sense that neither party walks away comfortable that their concerns are addressed in the general case. This can be easily achieved in a DTD with e.g. "subsection" and "subsubsection" elements. 2. Limit the nesting in the out-of-box DITA using formally declared constraints or prose. In addition, provide a mechanism whereby a knowledgable specializer can loosen the constraint for their specialization (not, typically, to allow indefinite nesting, but rather to allow the creation of grouping elements in the specialization). The specification can outline the dangers of this loosening and the situations under which we believe it is a good thing. If we can agree that these specializers are (in general) knowledgable and trustworthy then both parties achieve their goal. Paul Prescod

References:
- Two proposals for nested sections
  - From: "Paul Prescod" <paul.prescod@blastradius.com>