Re: [dita] Scenario for cross-deliverable referencing

[Michael Priestley <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>]

Hi Mark,

Links across publications could use
the same technique as I've described for chapters. I used chapters as my
primary example because I wanted to use an example in which the same reference
might resolve as cross-deliverable or same-deliverable depending on the
including map and build process.

Michael Priestley, Senior Technical
Staff Member (STSM)
Lead IBM DITA Architect 
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25

From:	Mark Poston <mark.poston@mekon.com>
To:	Michael Priestley/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA, "dita@lists.oasis-open.org" <dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
Date:	09/06/2011 11:58 AM
Subject:	Re: [dita] Scenario for cross-deliverable referencing

---

Hi Michael,

Forgive if I have missed something from
previous discussions about this particular requirement.

Should the scenario be expanded to also
include links across publications (maps) and not just limited to chapters
with a book? This is certainly a situation which we have come up against
with customers, where, for example, a chapter in a user guide may refer
to a chapter in an admin guide.

Or, are you implying this through the
use of a series of nested maps – where each mapref links to a complete
publication?

Kind regards
 
Mark Poston
Senior Technical Consultant
Mekon Ltd.
Tel. +44 20 8722 8461
Mob: +44 7515 906032 
Skype: mark_mekon.com
Twitter: mekonmark

From: Michael Priestley <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2011 15:19:46 +0100
To: "dita@lists.oasis-open.org" <dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: [dita] Scenario for cross-deliverable referencing


This was my todo from last week's mtg - sorry I'm leaving it to the wire.

This describes a solution that can be implemented today - I still think there more work to be done, including:

-  a general solution for key scoping (but not deliverable-based scoping since the boundaries of deliverables are mutable, as I'm trying to show here).
- a standardized approach for cross-deliverable referencing - if we want to encourage this approach, for example, or propose an alternative - but we should be providing some guidance to vendors on how to implement so that the solution is cross-vendor compatible

scenario:
- we need to produce PDFs for each chapter of a book, as well as a single big PDF that contains all chapters
- the chapters contain cross-references to content in other chapters, which needs to be resolved as a cross-deliverable link in the single-chapter PDFs but as a local link in the single big PDF case
- each chapter is represented by a separate map
- each topicref in the map has a uniquely addressable key (using whatever general scoping mechanism we choose to implement)
- the book as a whole is represented by a master map that pulls in the others

solution for individual chapter case:
- for each chapter, execute a partial PDF build, which does not transform the content but does preprocess the map to turn each topicref href into a form appropriate for the deliverable being produced (ie, including the filename of the PDF being produced, with appropriate anchor syntax)
       this results in a deliverable-specific set of key mappings
- for each chapter, create a master map that includes the chapter being built and then resource-only inclusionsof the deliverable-specific maps for all other chapters
- for each chapter's master map, execute a full PDF build
       this results in a chapter-level PDF with all links to other chapter resolved correctly

solution for whole book case:
- build normally

Michael Priestley, Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM)
Lead IBM DITA Architect
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25