AW: [dita] hazard statement widths

["Christian Kravogel" <christian.kravogel@seicodyne.ch>]

Paul

you mentioned: "A spec that doesn't cover all cases is broken."
I doubt that specs can cover all cases - In my point of view they can never
do.

Giving you a more simple answer to the question what to do if an authors
specifies a too big hazardsymbol width.

In DITA 1.2 we do not cover special panel arrangements as they are specified
in ANSI Z535.4. 
In DITA 1.2 we do have Horizontal panel arrangements as default only, e.g.
http://www.ce-mag.com/ARG/00ARGCE263A.jpg

In a hazard statement rendered as horizontal panel the maximum width of a
hazardsymbol must not be larger then 50% of the maximum width of the
hazardstatement.

For more details please follow the definitions in ANSI Z545.4

We can add this to the archi-specs.

Would that be OK to you as implementer?

Best regards

Chris

 
SeicoDyne GmbH
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Tel: +41 41 534 66 97
Mob: +41 78 790 66 97
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www.seicodyne.com
christian.kravogel@seicodyne.com
 

Member of the DITA Technical Committee
Chairman of the DITA Machine Industry Subcommittee

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Grosso, Paul [mailto:pgrosso@ptc.com] 
Gesendet: Dienstag, 3. März 2009 20:40
An: dita
Betreff: RE: [dita] hazard statement widths

I'm not finding the subcommittee's answer helpful or acceptable.

Comments below.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Christian Kravogel [mailto:christian.kravogel@seicodyne.ch]
> Sent: Tuesday, 2009 March 03 13:25
> To: Grosso, Paul; 'dita'
> Subject: AW: [dita] hazard statement widths
> 
> We have discssed this issue in the machine industry subcommittee and 
> came up with the following answer.
> 
> We understand the request by Paul Grosso. But adding such a warning 
> into the specs, mentioning that a author should not specify a 
> hazardsymbol width wider then the width of the hazardstatement, is an 
> affront to the intelligence of the author. And if an author would make 
> this unintentional, a warning in the specs would not have avoided it.

I'm not talking about adding a warning to the spec.

I'm talking about augmenting the spec to cover a case it currently does not
cover.  This is not an issue of questioning the intelligence of anyone, it
is a question of writing a standard that covers all cases--even if the way
it covers it is to say the result is implementation dependent.  A spec that
doesn't cover all cases is broken.

> 
> There is no necessity to warn users or avoid that an author specifies 
> a bigger hazardsymbol width then the available space.

I believe the subcommittee is missing the point.

The DITA standard is not speaking to authors.  It is speaking to
implementors.  The question it needs to answer is what should implementors
do when authors provide certain combinations of data, and a spec that does
not answer such a question is missing something.

> 
> The recommendation of the Machine Industry Subcommittee to face this 
> problem
> is:
> 1. We recommend that in the stylesheets of the DITA Open Toolkit the 
> rendering of a hazard statement must be aligned to the ANSI standard 
> for warning lables. This includes to specify a maximum or default 
> value for the width of Hazardsymbols as well as all other layouting 
> recommendations by ANSI for hazardstatments. If an author uses 
> attribute values which are not inline with the ANSI standard, they 
> just will be ignored.

I am not talking about what the OT does, and the DITA spec should not be
doing that either.

I don't know enough about the ANSI standard for warning labels.

Can the subcommittee turn this recommendation into a statement on how the
DITA spec can be modified to answer the question of what an implementation
should do in the cases I outline?

> 2. For DITA 1.3 we are going to discuss what attributes will be 
> required and which are not required in note and hazardstatement. We 
> e.g.
> need additional
> attributes defining the different panel arrangements according to 
> ANSI.

Fine, but the DITA 1.2 spec is broken and needs to be fixed even if only to
say something like:

 this is an error; an implementation may (but need not)  give an error
message, and may (but  need not) recover  from this error condition by doing
xxxxx.

which we do in several other places in the spec.

paul

> 
> Best regards
> 
> Chris
> 
> 
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Grosso, Paul [mailto:pgrosso@ptc.com]
> Gesendet: Dienstag, 10. Februar 2009 19:37
> An: dita
> Betreff: RE: [dita] hazard statement widths
> 
>  
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Christian Kravogel [mailto:christian.kravogel@seicodyne.ch]
> > Sent: Tuesday, 2009 February 10 12:25
> > To: 'dita'
> > Subject: AW: [dita] hazard statement widths
> > 
> > You are right, but do we really try to avoid any possible stupidity 
> > done by authors?
> 
> Not necessarily, but the spec should probably say what should happen 
> in such cases.  Even if all it says is "this is an error; an 
> implementation may (but need not) give an error message, and may (but 
> need not) recover from this error condition by doing xxxxx".
> 
> > 
> > If someone defines a table width of 2 inches and adds an
> image into a
> > table cell giving the width of 3 inches? Isn't it the same problem?
> 
> Not really.  Putting something too large to fit in the allotted space 
> is a classic composition issue and isn't quite the same as having a 
> DTD that allows for two conflicting attributes.  But that's probably 
> beside the point.
> 
> > 
> > But on one point you are absolutely right, we should review
> the note
> > and hazardstatement attributes for DITA Version 1.3. There are a 
> > couple of open issues there, e.g. additional attributes to
> define the
> > panel arrangement of a note or hazardstatement.
> 
> Fine.
> 
> > 
> > Paul, I will take you input to our subcommittee and we will discuss 
> > what additional attributes are required and which should be
> removed. 
> > For DITA 1.2 we have just copied the attributes from note. 
> But there
> > might be better ideas.
> 
> For DITA 1.2, we don't have to change the DTD (I leave that up to the 
> subcommittee), but we do have to say something in the spec.
> See my first
> paragraph above.
> 
> paul
> 
> > 
> > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> > Von: Grosso, Paul [mailto:pgrosso@ptc.com]
> > Gesendet: Dienstag, 10. Februar 2009 16:02
> > An: dita
> > Betreff: [dita] hazard statement widths
> > 
> > In a hazard statement, you can set the width of the hazard
> statement
> > using the attribute width. There is also an align
> attribute, so if the
> > set width is smaller than the available width, we could align the 
> > output to center, right, or left. So far so good. But then there is 
> > also a width attribute on the hazardsymbol tag which is a
> child of the
> > hazard statement.
> > 
> > There is nothing to prevent users from doing things like
> setting the
> > hazard statement width to 2 inches and the hazard symbol width to 3 
> > inches.
> > 
> > It seems either we need to remove one of the width
> attributes from the
> > DTD or the spec needs to define what the correct processing
> should be
> > in such cases.
> > 
> > paul
> > 
> 
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