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Subject: Re: [dita] Are indexterm ranges backwards incompatible?
- From: Michael Priestley <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>
- To: Dana Spradley <dana.spradley@oracle.com>
- Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 18:21:41 -0400
After some discussion with Bruce Esrig,
we've got a compromise proposal documented here:
http://wiki.oasis-open.org/dita/Indexing_issue_summary?action=show
This compromise is designed, among other
things, to leave the range/not range decision up to the author, by allowing
ranges to be specified on a per-topic basis as well as a per-branch basis
using the index range attributes.
See the heading "Proposal for indexing
ranges", text copied here for ease of discussion:
------------------
Index entries are interpreted as point
references. The index contains a reference to the point where the index
entry is declared. If an index entry occurs in a topic prolog, the reference
is to the start of the title of the topic.
Index ranges are structural. Most index
range declarations refer to an entire topic or set of topics. The only
exception is a range contained entirely within the body of a topic.
Index range indications may occur in
the topicmeta of a topicref at the map level. Similarly, they may occur
in the prolog of a topic. These two locations are architecturally equivalent,
so either indication may appear in either place, and a match will still
be recognized.
An index range start indication in the
meta information for a topic is interpreted to indicate the start of the
topic title. An index range end indication in the meta information for
a topic is interpreted to indicate the end of the topic. This includes
all subtrees of nested topics, including subtrees of the start and end
topics and any intervening subtrees. The subtree of nested topics is included
even when the range starts and ends in the meta information for the same
topic.
An index range may start in the body
of a topic. Such an index range ends at a matching index range end indication
within the same body, or at the end of the body, whichever comes first.
Such an index range does not span sub-topics of the topic.
-------------------------
Michael Priestley
IBM DITA Architect and Classification Schema PDT Lead
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25
Dana Spradley <dana.spradley@oracle.com>
08/21/2006 06:01 PM
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| Re: [dita] Are indexterm ranges backwards
incompatible? |
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Coming back to this issue today, I agree
that a compromise is appropriate, given its relative triviality.
The only addition I'd make to Paul's previously suggested implementation
statement would be to put indesterm start/end rendering in the hands of
end users as well (my addition bolded):
"Index terms in prologs are neither ranges nor points.
They are associated with the whole topic. DITA publishing implementations
are encouraged to let the end-user choose whether to represent them as
page ranges spanning an entire topic or individual pages in an index. Publishing
implementations are also encouraged to let end users decide whether to
render indexterm start/end pairs as page ranges, or as point references
to the start indexterm. Another choice that publishing
implementations may wish to provide is whether to collapse multiple continguous
page references into a single page range."
--Dana
Paul Prescod wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: Grosso, Paul [mailto:pgrosso@ptc.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 7:01 AM
To: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [dita] Are indexterm ranges backwards incompatible?
...
Importance and ranges are orthogonal concepts.
I think that underlying this debate is a difference in styles by index
users. When I'm presented with many mentions of a particular topic,
there are three things that I look at:
1. is any bolded as being the "defining" instance of an index
entry?
(hard to do in topic-oriented content!)
2. which comes first (also not necessarily informative in
topic-oriented content)
3. which is longest: likely to be a tutorial and not just a random
mention
So I understand Dana's point, but I don't (personally) think it is
crucial enough for substantial spec rewriting at this point. It is
totally true that if you have a Concept called "Cheese" then
you would
want that topic to look special in the index entry for cheese. It is
also true that barring any special markup, making that mention into the
longest range is ONE way to make it stand out. Maybe we should agree for
DITA 1.2 to document other (more explicit) ways to make it stand out.
To put it another way: if a publishing tool provides the options I've
proposed then I would tend to advocate that they be set Dana's way
rather than the way others propose.
That said, I think it is acceptable to leave control of the issue in the
hands of the end-user rather than requiring it to be hard coded in the
spec. I thought that we were heading towards a compromise on those
terms.
Paul Prescod
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