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Subject: Re: [dita] Question about -dita-use-conref-target in unexpected places


IMHO, yes, -dita-use-conref-target should be allowed wherever its presence would not result in DTD validation errors, regardless of the semantic purpose defined in the spec.

Chris

Chris Nitchie

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From: Robert D Anderson <robander@us.ibm.com>
Date: Thursday, January 15, 2015 at 4:28 PM
To: "dita@lists.oasis-open.org" <dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: [dita] Question about -dita-use-conref-target in unexpected places

In a DITA-OT forum we got a question about the extent to which "-dita-use-conref-target" is allowed as an attribute token.

Reminder / background: this admittedly quirky token is the only way to override conref rules when you have a required attribute. Local attributes on a referencing element override those on the referenced element. If you have a required attribute, it used to be impossible to have conref set an attribute like @name on <param>, because you MUST set @name, and then @name overrides anything on the target:
<param name="must-set-this" conref="...."/>

The token lets you use conref, pulling in @name from the referenced element, which is probably what you wanted:
<param name="-dita-use-conref-target" conref="...."/>

The DITA 1.2 spec says "The value -dita-use-conref-target is available on enumerated attributes and may also be specified on other attributes." The intent was that you can use this anywhere, and the attribute does not have to be required (also knowing that a constraint or specialization can make any attribute required).

So the question is - what about for attributes where we declare that the attribute must be something else? Specifically, what about @cols on <tgroup>, which is defined as a number - specifically, the number of columns in the group? Or what about the date attributes on <created>, <copyryear>, and so on, which are defined as using a date format?

Some attributes are defined in a way that "-dita-use-conref-target" is simply not valid, so I'm not asking about those - this is only a question about attributes where the grammar files technically allow it, but the prose in the spec explicitly sets a range of values that does not include -dita-use-conref-target. In those cases, is this token implicitly allowed?

Thanks,

Robert D Anderson
IBM Authoring Tools Development
Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit (http://www.dita-ot.org/)



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