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Subject: RE: [dita] some index-range-* issues
We've covered this discussion before months ago when we
talked about indexterms. You might want to go over the extended discussion in
the proposal, which gives some of the reasoning. If the text of interest is an
entire topic, it's better suited as an entry in the table of contents and should
not be in the index. That's not what index entries are
for.
Chris From: Dana Spradley [mailto:dana.spradley@oracle.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 2:34 PM To: Grosso, Paul Cc: dita@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [dita] some index-range-* issues On the other hand, what is an index range supposed to mean when you come across one in an index? I always thought it meant that's where an extended discussion of that topic occurs in the book. DITA being a topic-oriented architecture, it would seem more appropriate to put indexterms that apply to the entire topic somewhere in the metadata for that topic - and only construct index ranges for those. --Dana Grosso, Paul wrote: I'm resending this email to the list since it never made it. I have deleted some parts that are no longer at issue. I hope to follow up with another email with another proposal. Issues ====== The currently proposed index-range-* elements are just empty "flags" that get put inside an indexterm element. But it is not necessarily clear what this means in the case of nested indexterms. For example, per my best understanding, one way to indicate a page range for my "pecorino" example would be markup such as the following (where the comments just indicate what pages each indexterm falls on): . . . <!-- page 22 --> <indexterm>cheese <indexterm>sheeps milk cheeses <indexterm>pecorino<index-range-start/></indexterm> </indexterm> </indexterm> . . . <!-- page 24 --> <indexterm>cheese <indexterm>sheeps milk cheeses <indexterm>pecorino<index-range-end/></indexterm> </indexterm> </indexterm> . . . But what if the <index-range-start/> is placed elsewhere in the first indexterm, such as: <!-- page 22 --> <indexterm>cheese<index-range-start/> <indexterm>sheeps milk cheeses <indexterm>pecorino</indexterm> </indexterm> </indexterm> Is that equivalent, does it mean something else, or is it an error? (My best guess is that it should be equivalent.) What about the following: <indexterm>cheese<index-range-start/></indexterm> . . . <indexterm>cheese<index-range-end/> <indexterm>sheeps milk cheeses </indexterm> </indexterm> Since the first is an index reference for "cheese" and the second is one for "cheese;sheeps milk cheeses", my best guess is these two do not constitute a matched pair. What about the following: <indexterm>cheese<index-range-start/> <indexterm>sheeps milk cheeses<index-range-end/> </indexterm> </indexterm> . . . <indexterm>cheese<index-range-end/> <indexterm>sheeps milk cheeses </indexterm> </indexterm> Is the first indexterm a range start or range end (or just an error)? If it is a range start, does it end immediately, or is its range-end ignored, and the range is ended by the subsequent indexterm? None of this is made clear in the current writeup. Also, I think this is very confusing and error-prone for users. Potential solution ================== Rather than having empty index-range-* elements that magically redefine their parent to have different semantics, I think it would be preferable to have a specialization of indexterm (or just another element) that can be used to indicate the start of a range--so we would write something like: <index-range-start>cheese <indexterm>sheeps milk cheeses <indexterm>pecorino</indexterm> </indexterm> </index-range-start> to start the "cheese--sheeps milk cheeses--pecorino" range. While in theory we could then have an analagous index-range-end element with the identical nested indexterm content, I think that is another mistake in the current proposal. The idea of creating matching pairs by having to have identical content has already been pointed out as a translation nightmare, but when you start to consider nested indexterms, it's an even worse error-prone mess, both for the user and the implementors. Instead, I would add an NMTOKEN attribute to both index-range-start and index-range-end, and have index-range-end be an empty element that just refers back to the start: <index-range-start subject="pecorino">cheese <indexterm>sheeps milk cheeses <indexterm>pecorino</indexterm> </indexterm> </index-range-start> . . . <index-range-end subject="pecorino"/> The "subject" attribute would act like a sort of id/idref, but I've avoided really using IDs, because then if you have two ranges that discuss "pecorino", you couldn't reuse the id="pecorino". paul |
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