RE: [dita] Nested Sections - counterexample

["France Baril" <France.Baril@ixiasoft.com>]

Hi Bruce.

 

If I understand your email correctly, you are questioning the fact that the current DITA model could be used in this specific case.

 

My uneducated answer would be a specialization similar to this (uneducated because I might be missing part of the context):

 

<lucenttask otherprops="lang(1)">

<shortdesc>Short description of the full procedure</shortdesc>

<lucenttaskbody>

<steps>

   <step>

       <cmd> what to do in Lang 1

       <stepresult>what you have accomplished  <!-- The label is not necessary in the XML -->

       <related-step href="conreference to the full procedure in Lang 2#correspondingcmd"> <!-- output may or not include text of related cmd in lang 2 -->

  </step>

<step>

       <cmd> what to do in Lang 1 for next step

       <stepresult>what you have accomplished  <!-- The label is not necessary in the XML -->

       <related-step href="conreference to the full procedure in Lang 2#correspondingcmd"> <!-- output may or not include text of related cmd in lang 2 -->

  </step>

</steps>

<taskbody>

<related-links>

    <link href="cross-reference to the full procedure in Lang 2"> <!-- Layout may include shortdesc of referenced procedure -->

</related-links>

</task>

Is this a specialization, yes. Is this an issue? If you are going to base a whole project on the fact that you can reference another task in parallel, why not take the time to specialize and have a model that matches your specific needs? Creating a specialization is not a long task to perform, being able to change your mind on the presentation based on semantics might however save you a lot of time.

 

What if you decide to hide this info to some people? What if you want to display the text in gray or with a different background-color so that readers see it as extra information, not core info? What if you want to generate reports on what references to what? What if you don't want to see the preceding label anymore? What if you want to inforce your model so that authors always write the stepresults before the related-steps? What if related-steps are treated differently then other regular xrefs so that they actually extract the text from the referenced cmd?

 

This sounds to me like a big enough requirement to justify sending a new request to the development team. A few hours of development on the core model might save you long hours of hacking.