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Subject: Re: [dita] Constraint Mechanism [was 1.2 Requirements Ranking]
Erik Hennum wrote: > Hi, Eliot: > > Maybe a particularly good discussion to have, given the issue Paul > raised today about the long term roadmap for DITA... Something that Erik's comments bring up that we should consider as well is the potential for the process of trying to define a constraint mechanism to force us to revisit the entire specialization mechanism and its details. I don't think we, as a TC or as a community could afford to that now--it's too new and people are just now starting to get their heads around what specialization means and becoming comfortable with the idea that specialization might be appropriate for them, much less applying it in sophisticated ways that would benefit from more sophisticated constraint mechanisms. Therefore, I would like to avoid for now any discussions that would have the effect of requiring me, for example, to say things like "aspect X of the current specialization architecture is {broken|misguided|not quite right|essential for the safety of the universe} for this reason...". I fear that as soon as you start discussing things like the implications of generalization on constrained DTDs you get to that point very quickly. I think that *eventually* we need to have that discussion, but I think it needs to be in the context of a larger 2.0 discussion, when we have more freedom to rethink the core DITA architecture and syntax. It's clear to me that, at the moment, the specialization mechanism as currently defined works at least well enough to realize the intended benefits, in particular, the ability to apply generic processing to specialized instances. Constraint specification beyond what one can already potentially do with DTDs or XSD or RelaxNG or Schematron seems like pre-mature optimization in the face of more pressing and easy-to-implement requirements. Cheers, Eliot -- W. Eliot Kimber Professional Services Innodata Isogen 8500 N. Mopac, Suite 402 Austin, TX 78759 (214) 954-5198 ekimber@innodata-isogen.com www.innodata-isogen.com
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