RE: [dita] RE: [Dita-ot-developer] Handling of xref attributes

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

________________________________

        From: Michael Priestley [mailto:mpriestl@ca.ibm.com]
        Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2006 5:00 PM
        To: Paul Prescod
        Cc: dita@lists.oasis-open.org; dita-ot-developer@lists.sourceforge.net; Robert D Anderson; Su-Laine Yeo
        Subject: RE: [dita] RE: [Dita-ot-developer] Handling of xref attributes
       
       
       
        scope="local": grab linktext (and shortdesc if available) from the target unless defined in the link/topicref/xref
                - format is assumed to be dita, href will change .dita to .html on output; if format not dita, linktext must be defined in the link/topicref/xref
        

Okay, can we update the DITA spec to be less media specific. (my rewrites are not meant to be taken verbatim but to suggest what I think are the key concepts)

From: "Set scope to local when the resource is part of the current set of content, and should be accessed and copied to the output directory."

To: "Set scope to local when the resource is part of the current set of content, and the link address should be rewritten to use some form of content-set-internal addressing like a relative path or ID. If the link is empty and the referent is of format DITA then the link text will be derived from the content of the referent."

Even for HTML the previous text was not quite correct because you don't "copy" DITA resources into the output directory. You process them into the output directory. For PDF or "real print" there isn't necessarily anything you would call an output directory at all.

         scope="peer": linktext must be defined in the link/topicref/xref (shortdesc optional)
                - format is assumed to be dita, href will change .dita to .html on output 


From:  "Set scope to peer when the resource is part of the current set of content but is not accessible at build time. "

To: "Set scope to peer when the resource is part of the current set of content but is not processed into output in the same output process. DITA processing software will rewrite the link address using some algorithm that predicts the eventual location of the referent, or fix the link later."

I hope this makes it clearer what the software is intended to do. For simple, single-directory XHTML, it would use the algorithm you describe. For PDF it might use a different algorithm. In a complex enterprise publishing system it might ask a relational database what the current external web location is of the topic being referenced.

 scope="external": linktext defaults to the URL unless defined in the link/topicref/xref (shortdesc also optional)
        - format is assumed to be NOT dita; href will be passed through as-is 

 From: "Set scope to external when the resource is not part of the current information set and should open in a new browser window."

To: "Set scope to external when the resource is not part of the current information set. DITA publishing software should not rewrite the address. In an online context the link should typically open in a new browser window."

My rewrite is intended to be explicitly media-independent. It is also intended to demote the presentation instruction from a requirement to a suggestion.

 Paul Prescod