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Subject: Need for more generic publication map vocabulary (Proposal 13032)


My argument is thus:

1. Bookmap is not sufficiently flexible or general to support the needs of
many, if not most, publications. Because it is a map *type* and not a map
*domain*, it cannot be extended or otherwise used with other map types. It
imposes constraints that are too restrictive for many publications,
certainly for most, not all, Publishing documents, and for many technical
publications as well. It's design does not support representing publications
as trees of submaps (for example, you cannot have a bookmap map with a root
topicref type of <chapter>).

2. Therefore, the DITA community needs a more general map type that is
specifically for publications (that is, units of publishing) and reasonably
expects the TC to provide it, given that the TC previously provided Bookmap
and Learning Map.

3. The L&T learning map and learning metadata domains demonstrate a much
more flexible pattern for map specializations, one that allows a much
greater range of specialization and configuration options. In particular, by
separating the publication metadata from the publication structure, it
avoids one of the key problems of Bookmap, namely underspecified metadata
and allows combining the specialized topicrefs with other map types.

4. Thus we need three new vocabulary modules that together serve as the base
for publication maps:

- A publication metadata domain that provides a greater range of metadata
options, of which the DITA for Publishers pubmetadataDomain serves as an
example and starting point.

- A publication map domain that provides a wide set of topicref types
representing all the different things that might occur in a publication. The
DITA for Publishers pubmapDomain serves as an example and starting point.

- A publication map document map type that combines the two domains as an
example of how to combine them to define a working publication structure.

Given 4 it would be possible to define the functional equivalent of Bookmap
as a specialization of Pubmap, as an exercise in showing how the domains can
be used. 

I feel strongly this type of generic publication map is not Publishing
specific, so while it could be provided unilaterally by the DITA for
Publishers project, I think it's very important for this type of generic map
model to be part of the TC-provided vocabulary so that it is obviously
available to the community and serves as a normative model for
more-specialized map vocabulary.

Cheers,

Eliot

-- 
Eliot Kimber
Senior Solutions Architect
"Bringing Strategy, Content, and Technology Together"
Main: 512.554.9368
www.reallysi.com
www.rsuitecms.com



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