RE: Bookmap implementation

["Yas Etessam" <yas.etessam@xmetal.com>]

France might not have been the only person sleeping,  removing the chapter element and defining chapter-level information as descendants of chapter group does seem like a good suggestion, albeit a late suggestion.

 

Implementing a model for promoting, demoting content and adding and removing topicrefs and submaps is simpler in the second example than the first.

 

<chapter href="a.xml"><topicref/></chapter>

<chapter href=" b.xml"/>

<chapter href="c.ditamap"/>

 

<chaptergroup>

    <topicref href="a.xml"><topicref/></topicref>

    <topicref href="b.xml"/>

    <topicref href="c.ditamap"/>

</chaptergroup>

Refer to "bookmap.mod" for the element declaration of chapter and entity declaration  for % chapter-atts, I won't bother duplicating that information here, but folks can look at the bookmap.mod themselves to see the definitions.

Chapter does not contain special chapter-level metadata or markup which forces the specialization of  <topicref> to <chapter>.

If a chapter element does not carry any special chapter-specific metadata,  one could define a chapter's positionally rather than literally, i.e. the  first level topicref inside a chapter group is rendered as a chapter.  

 

The problem is timing; the design was approved and the DTD's are done.    I'm not sure if anything can be done for 1.1, or whether other TC members find this is an important issue.

 

And to play devil's advocate, if the group who designed bookmap could discuss some of the advantages of the current design on the list, it would be useful to have a better understanding of the underlying design decisions that were made.

 

Yas Etessam

 

 

 

 

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From: France Baril [mailto:France.Baril@ixiasoft.com]
Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 2:00 PM
To: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Bookmap implementation

Hi, I had looked at the bookmap implementation earlier and had found it pretty nice, but lately I started looking at it from an implementation point of view.

 

Bang, I was slapped in the face. I know it's late in the process, but I thought I should say something anyway.

 

In order to allow embedding maps in maps and to ease manipulation of a single map. I would suggest that we drop the structure:

 

Bookmap

  preface

  chapter

  chapter

  chapter

  appendice

  appendice

 

And get something that is more like:

 

Bookmap

  Preface

  Chapters (specialized from topicgroup?)

     topicref

          topicref

     topicref

     topicref

  Appendices (specialized from topicgroup?)

     topicref

     topicref

 

With the current structure, if I want to add a level around the first 10 chapters, I have to change the element name for all 10 topicrefs that were previously identified as chapters. Moreover, it becomes hard to implement maps in maps because you get multiple chapter levels.

 

France, who just woke up...

 

P.S. Feel free to slap me in the face again for bringing this up now!!!!

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