Hi All,
Why is it not possible to include “transitional
text” of the sort in these examples in a topic? In a task, the transition
can be part of a post-requisite. In a concept, you can build a transition into
the final paragraph. I would really like to see an example of someone’s
intended transitional text and understand why it couldn’t be incorporated
into the topic itself if indeed the topics need to be read in a sequence.
I think Erik’s proposal is quite
useful, but not for this purpose.
JoAnn
JoAnn T. Hackos, PhD
President
Comtech Services, Inc.
710 Kipling Street, Suite 400
Denver, CO 80215
303-232-7586
joann.hackos@comtech-serv.com
joannhackos Skype
www.comtech-serv.com
From: Erik Hennum
[mailto:ehennum@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 4:47
PM
To: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [dita] transitional text
and conref with delta
Hi,
Esteemed Technical Committee:
As a followup to today's discussion, I'd like to add one more alternative to
Robert's list of options for transitional text:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200605/msg00031.html
If DITA 1.2 introduces the feature of conref push or pull with delta:
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/download.php/15120/IssueNumber17e.html
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/download.php/15117/IssueNumber17b.html
a writer could insert or append transitional text to any topic.
This approach has several benefits:
- Flexibility in supplying transitional text either
before or after the standalone topic or even modifying the standalone
topic for the book context if need be.
- Transparency in that the transitional content is
associated by explicit reference with the transitioned topic instead of
being merged into the output based on rules that aren't manifest in the
XML.
- Economy through use of a general-purpose function
instead of a separate special feature.
It also addresses the concerns about the potential for inline transitions to
mingle content into the context.
For those reasons, I'd suggest that we defer the transitional text issue, get
DITA 1.1 out the door, and bear down on DITA 1.2 including conref with delta.
If we discover that conref with delta doesn't solve the transitional text
problem, we can always introduce a different solution. If conref with delta
does work, we will have avoided creating legacy that has to be deprecated
later.
Thanks,
Erik Hennum
ehennum@us.ibm.com