Re: [dita] task vs. general task, constraints, conref, and other relatedissues

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

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the write up.

I've also had trouble following some of the issues. I thought that at least
some of the problems came from mixing up the issues of 1) how do
constraints work in general, and 2) how do we deal with our task
distribution in particular. I put together an FAQ on constraints today
before I saw your note, hoping that it might address some of the confusion
about the general item. It's quite possible that I've left off some
questions that have come up; I'd suggest that any other questions should be
added, but that answers should be kept as short and simple as possible.
http://wiki.oasis-open.org/dita/ConstraintsFaq

Robert D Anderson
IBM Authoring Tools Development
Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit


                                                                           
             "Ogden, Jeff"                                                 
             <jogden@ptc.com>                                              
                                                                        To 
             09/29/2009 10:26          "dita" <dita@lists.oasis-open.org>  
             AM                                                         cc 
                                                                           
                                                                   Subject 
                                       [dita] task vs. general task,       
                                       constraints, conref, and other      
                                       related issues                      
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           




The ongoing discussion that started with Joann’s notes about “Problems with
the task model” has become quite wide ranging.  So wide ranging, that I’m
having trouble keeping track of what we have decided for DITA 1.2, what
remains to be decided for DITA 1.2, and what are a topics for future
discussion for DITA 1.3 or DITA 2.0.  This note is my attempt to summarize
the discussion so far.

      1.       The TC has decided that strict task rather than general task
      should be included in the ditabase doctype shell that is included as
      part of Technical Content. DTDs, XSDs, and the DITA 1.2 specification
      will all need to be updated.

      2.       There is an open question about the need to include a second
      ditabase doctype shell that would include general task rather than
      strict task.  The TC seemed to be leaning toward not including a
      second ditabase doctype shell, but I don’t think there is a consensus
      about that and a final decision remains to be made.  If a decision is
      made to include a second ditabase, we would need to pick a location
      for the additional doctype shell, filenames, a Public ID, and a URI,
      and the DTDs, XSDs, and the DITA specification would all need to e
      updated.

      3.       There is a preliminary proposal to allow “weak” constraints
      to be declared. So far no one has raised technical complaints about
      the proposal. There has been support for including the proposal as
      part of DITA 1.2 expressed by several people. There have been
      reservations about considering the proposal this late in the DITA 1.2
      cycle. I expressed a reservation about this making things more
      complicated with the possibility of yet more combinations of things.
      There is a concern that MP and others may not have the necessary
      bandwidth in the short run to turn this into a more formal and
      complete proposal. If the proposal does go forward, the TC will need
      to make some decisions about using “week” or “strict” constraints for
      task.dtd and ditabase.dtd.

      4.       There have been a lot of discussions about what is and isn’t
      or what should and shouldn’t be valid when using conref. There is one
      question about doing conref validation based on content models in
      DTDs or XSDs rather than information in the domains attribute value.
      I’m not aware of any other specific open questions or decisions for
      DITA 1.2 coming out of this portion of the discussion.

      5.       Questions have been raised about the constraints mechanism
      in general and if it was appropriate to use it to implement the new
      versions of task that are part of DITA 1.2.  I don’t think there has
      been a formal proposal to withdraw constraints from DITA 1.2 or to
      reimplement the versions of task without using constraints, but that
      might yet come up.

And that is pretty much everything that I think has come up in the public
discussions so far.  Did I leave anything out?

I’ve been involved in or started some private discussions where some other
issues were raised:

      6.       The names we have for task.dtd, generalTask.dtd, task.mod,
      task.ent, strictTaskbodyConstraint.mod and the associated XSDs,
      Public IDs, and URIs seem confusing.  Would new names for some of the
      these items help?  For compatibility reasons we’d probably need to
      use the same sort of trick we used with glossary and glossentry, so
      the old names would continue to work.

      7.       Are many of the issues we’ve been discussing tied to
      shortcomings of ditabases and shortcomings of DTDs --that a ditabase
      can only contain a single use (constrained or unconstrained) of a
      particular info type?  Should we look for a way to remove or relax
      that restriction in DITA 1.3 or 2.0?

      8.       Some questions about topic nesting, conref validation, and
      the domains attribute that Eliot added to the list of things to
      consider for DITA 1.3.

I’m guessing that there may be other topics from private discussions that
aren’t known to the entire list. If there are and if they need to be
considered for DITA 1.2, please put them forward now.

   -Jeff