Question about stepsection

[Robert D Anderson <robander@us.ibm.com>]

Hello - nobody claimed responsibility for the "general task" item at
Tuesday's call, so this question goes to the full group.

DITA 1.2 defines a new <stepsection> element which goes into <steps> and
<steps-unordered>. The expectation is that content in a <stepsection>
element will not be numbered together with the other steps.

The proposal says that no new behaviors are defined by the general task
type proposal itself, but it also says that "specialized processing is
required to avoid numbering <stepsection> elements. "
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/26791/IssueNumber12011v1.2rev3.html

So the question is - should the spec describe this numbering as a required
behavior, or is it optional? Does the language mean only that, should one
decide to skip numbering, specialized processing would be required?

I think the intent was to make this a required behavior, so if I do not
hear otherwise, that's what the spec will say. The latest draft simply asks
this question in a draft-comment.

Thanks -

Robert D Anderson
IBM Authoring Tools Development
Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit
(507) 253-8787, T/L 553-8787 (Good Monday & Thursday)