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Subject: modification to <data> element proposal


Hi, Esteemed DITA Technical Committee:

Regarding the <data> element proposal:


Michael Priestley pointed out a design flaw to me. While I am loathe to reopen an approved design, I also don't want to see us add a flawed design that will be much more difficult to fix later.

Here's the current design in DTD syntax:

The problem has to do with identifying an optional data subject with the about* attributes. It is potentially confusing to the writer to have a variant of the referencing attributes. It's also potentially confusing to have a single element represent both subject and object. Finally, it prevents the specializer from specializaing the data subject and object independently.

The fix is to provide separate elements for the data subject and data object. While this approach has a downside of adding two elements to all <data> contexts instead of one, that downside is outweighed by the benefits listed above.

Here's the revised design in DTD syntax:

For additional consistency or clarity, the modified design also:

In the following example, <statisticsTable> is specialized from <data-subject> and <statisticsSource> from <data>:

For instance, after XYZ restates their earnings, a process might refresh the contents of the simpletable by rerunning the query.


What do you think?


Erik Hennum
ehennum@us.ibm.com


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