RE: [dita] attribute extensibility - summary

["Esrig, Bruce (Bruce)" <esrig@lucent.com>]

Here's an attempt to summarize what's open on attribute extensibility.

Names just indicate a primary contact for the issue, not necessarily someone who signed up to resolve it.

 

Bruce Esrig

 

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Issues:

 (1) Four kinds of extension:

       (1a) Simple extension with a new attribute

       (1b) Pure specialization where values are pooled among certain attributes

       (1c) Structural specialization where values are treated as separate for a newly specialized attribute

       (1d) Special DITA sense of specialization, where the rules are adapted for the needs of the specializer

 (2) How to implement an evaluator for specialized attributes (Rob A.)

 (3) Whether to allow values to specify the mode of specialization that they intend (Paul P.)

 (4) Logic, such as not, but also re-explaining and/or behaviors for the extended feature (Michael P.)

 

This is clearly a very rich space of issues. In our discussion on Thursday, we made a lot of progress in defining what we need to consider. As a team, we haven't yet formed a time estimate of how long it would take to resolve enough of these issues to have a definite proposal for DITA 1.1.

 

Here's a possible approach (Bruce's own thoughts) to resolving the issues.

 

1. Agree that all attributes can be conditional.

2. Agree on which extension mechanisms are supported and, in the language and architecture, where they appear.

3. Establish a preliminary agreement on how to indicate which kind of extension mechanism applies to an attribute.

4a. Clearly describe the current logic based on the new understanding.

4b. Determine what the evaluator would do to implement the resulting suite of mechanisms, assuming it could recognize them.

5. Establish a complete syntax description for the extension mechanisms sufficient to support the needs of the evaluator, both in the specialized form and the generalized form.

6. Agree on what additional logic to allow.

7. Determine impacts of the additional logic on the syntax and the evaluator.