RE: [dita] Negative values

[Michael Priestley <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>]

There was a comment submitted to the
TC asking for wildcard filtering - I was reluctant to allow full wildcard
filtering because of its reliance on informal semantics (eg win* won't
match desktopwin, and *win wouldn't match windows but would match notwin).

I thought allowing scoped values - with
separate components that have a bit more formal identity - would increase
flexibility without sacrificing formality (ie we're still dealing with
whole values, even if they're part of a compound).

There was some discussion of this on
the dita-users list prior to the comment submission, but I have to admit
I don't think we discussed it on the TC list.

Michael Priestley
IBM DITA Architect and Classification Schema PDT Lead
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25

"Chris Wong" <cwong@idiominc.com>

04/18/2006 10:42 AM

To	Michael Priestley/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA, "Paul Prescod" <paul.prescod@blastradius.com>
cc	<dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject	RE: [dita] Negative values

I think he means "scoped
values". From your spec:
 
     audience="programmer/database
programmer/Java programmer/Web"
 
I'm surprised to see this in
the spec too, since I was not aware that there is significant demand for
this. Maybe I missed the discussion.
 
Chris

---

From: Michael Priestley [mailto:mpriestl@ca.ibm.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 10:24 AM
To: Paul Prescod
Cc: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [dita] Negative values


What scope attribute? 

Michael Priestley
IBM DITA Architect and Classification Schema PDT Lead
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25

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

04/18/2006 10:03 AM

To	<dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
cc
Subject	[dita] Negative values

This document describes negative values:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/17329/IssueNumber20.ht
ml

It isn't explicit about the semantics of them. For example, it implies
that negative and positive values can be combined in a single attribute
(otherwise why say that the NOT operator only applies to a single
value). But I would have thought that a negation of value A implies
value B by definition. Therefore explicitly stating value B is
redundant.

audience="NOT paul"

Means everybody but paul. Therefore saying "everybody but paul plus
janice" is redundant. In programming language terms:

If Audience!=paul OR audience=janice

Although I am a fan of the goals of this feature, I am not convinced
that we can work out the details in the time we have. Plus I think that
it is a bit of scope creep beyond what the TC agreed to. The same goes
for the scope attribute.

Paul Prescod