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Subject: RE: [dita] DITAbase for conversion
I’m
not sure I understand. If content created in DITA 1.0 and DITA 1.1 are
compatible with the strict, constrained version of task, they should also be valid
against the looser, unconstrained version as well. I don’t see a backward
compatibility issue here. Or am I missing something? Cheers, Rob
Hanna From: Kristen James Eberlein
[mailto:keberlein@pobox.com] And ditabase is going to need to contain the
"strict" task, in order to maintain backwards compatibility with DITA
1.0 and 1.1. I’m
not sure why users need to convert entire documents into ditabase when
perfectly good conversion tools are available to create individual topics. Most
tasks seemed to convert to the “strict” task model reasonably well
unless they are really peculiar. In most cases, those tasks need to be rewritten,
probably before they are converted. We
are seeing very little positive coming out of wholesale conversions of books to
ditabase when we have surveyed the productivity issues around implementing
DITA. In fact, the entire idea of “convert first, think later”
seems to have a considerable negative effect on the ability of an organization
to transition to effective, topic-based authoring. Therefore, the argument that
ditabase is most appropriate for conversions seems to me to foster an undesirable
activity and outcome. However,
we find that many organizations use ditabase not for conversion but for
authoring “collection files” that contain varied content to be used
for conrefs. Usually such collection files contain more than one instance of an
element, requiring multiple information types to be presented correctly. For
example, if we want to conref several pre-requisite statements (such as
equipment lists), we might “collect” them in a series of tasks in a
ditabase file. Putting them into a ditabase simplifies content maintenance. I
would prefer that ditabase contain the “strict” task topic rather
than the “general” task topic to maintain its appropriate use for
collection files. JoAnn JoAnn Hackos PhD President Comtech Services, Inc. Skype joannhackos |
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