RE: [dita] Inheritance of attributes through mapref

We don't need to provide a meaning for all possible combinations of all attribute values. And I will argue that it is better/simpler/more understandable if we don't.

So, for something like @scope we could say that when @format="ditamap" that the only meaningful value for @scope is "local", that in this case other @scope values are either

1. errors for which an implementation SHOULD report an error or warning message and MAY, but is NOT REQUIRED to, recover by assuming a value of "local" and continuing; or

2. that results are implantation specific and as a result values of @scope other than "local" SHOULD be used with caution since they may not produce the same results when used with different implementations.

-Jeff

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Eliot Kimber [mailto:ekimber@reallysi.com]

> Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 9:59 AM

> To: Robert D Anderson; Ogden, Jeff

> Cc: dita

> Subject: Re: [dita] Inheritance of attributes through mapref

> On 4/14/09 8:43 AM, "Robert D Anderson" <robander@us.ibm.com> wrote:

> > 2) What about the scope attribute? This is intended to describe the

> scope

> > of the target of the topicref. In the case of a normal topic reference,

> > scope="peer" means the target is not part of the current set of

> > information, and may not be available, but is part of my overall

> > information set (I think of this as a reference from one Eclipse plug-in

> to

> > another). However, if I set @scope="peer" on a reference to a map - does

> > that scope attribute describe the map (may not be available, part of

> > another information set), or does the scope attribute cascade to the map,

> > essentially resulting in a local map with full of peer topics?

> >

> > In the off-list discussion, Jeff Ogden has been pushing for the first

> > behavior (@scope=peer means the map is outside of the current

> information

> > set). I now have an action to go back to my users in IBM who are

> depending

> > upon the second behavior, so we can see what impact this will have

> and/or

> > see if they have other good reasons to keep this behavior.

> What would the processing implications be for a reference to a map that is

> not scope="local"?

> At the moment, the only well-defined meaning for a topicref to a map is

> inclusion of the map's elements in the set of effective elements of the

> resulting compound map. There is no notion of a navigational relationship

> that I know of in the current spec, which is the only thing I can imagine

> scope="peer" or scope="external" to mean (if it does not simply imply

> value

> propogation).

> The other possible behavior, that the @scope would propagate to the

> referenced map seems reasonable in that from the standpoint of the

> referenced map as authored, the topics it points to may be local but in

> the

> context of the referencing map they are peer or external, which would have

> the effect of changing the nature of how the compound map is rendered

> (depending on the details of how the processor using the map treats scope

> differences). Establishing this behavior would not require changing

> anything

> about what the spec says in this case, since we would not be changing the

> meaning of scope != local for topicrefs, whatever it means.

> If we accept Jeff's preference, then I think we would be obligated to say

> explicitly what it means to point to a non-local map, and I would think it

> establishes the non-local map as a root map to which a navigation

> relationship is established (that is, treating the target map as the root

> of

> a separate unit of publication, rather than a component of a compound map).

> At the moment, the only spec-defined behavior for topicref references to

> maps is virtual inclusion on the map element's children.

> [NOTE: I think the DITA spec actually needs a way to explicitly create

> map-to-map navigation relationships of the peer and external forms, but I

> don't think we can reasonably do it in 1.2, any more than we can other

> linking semantics recently discussed.]

> Cheers,

> Eliot

> ----

> Eliot Kimber | Senior Solutions Architect | Really Strategies, Inc.

> email: ekimber@reallysi.com <mailto:ekimber@reallysi.com>

> office: 610.631.6770 | cell: 512.554.9368

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