Re: [dita] Standard DITA processing instructions?

[ekimber <ekimber@reallysi.com>]

On 10/2/09 1:12 PM, "Michael Priestley" <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com> wrote:

> My usual thought is that if we want to standardize it, why make it PIs,
> which by their very nature cannot be controlled by a schema?
> 
> For example, for change tracking there's already some attributes that
> might be used - but if we wanted something new, we could create a domain
> specialized from <data> and make it broadly available.

In the specific case of change tracking, PIs are really your only option
because of the inherently cross-hierarchy and pervasive nature of change
marking. Things get very nutty very quickly if you try to use markup for
change tracking, as opposed to simply annotating existing elements with
changed/added/deleted attributes, which is a much harder problem.

Also, all the major editors already use some form of PI for tracking
changes, so defining a standard one for DITA would be relatively easy for
editors to react to. OxygenXML already supports both Arbortext and XMetal
change tracking PIs in addition to its own, what's one more?

Cheers,

Eliot

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