Re: [dita-comment] 1.3 troubleshooting topic permits empty remedy element?

[Kristen James Eberlein <kris@eberleinconsulting.com>]

Folks who don't want to embed task topics can constrain it out of the content model. I think that is something that I'll do frequently for clients.

Best,
Kris

Kristen James Eberlein
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting
www.eberleinconsulting.com
+1 919 682-2290; kriseberlein (skype)

On 4/1/2015 9:59 AM, Bob Thomas wrote:

Hi Joe,

Initially the remedy model required exactly one steps, steps-unordered, or steps-informal element. An unfortunate side-effect of that requirement was that remedy could not use conref content without having a non-functioning child steps* element, which requires a step element, which requires a cmd element (steps-informal would reduce this chain, but how many people would think to try it?). We decided to allow empty remedy to eliminate required children for conref. This is also why title is optional for condition and context.

Hi George,

There were use cases where people wanted to embed an entire task topic within troubleshooting instead of using remedy. The rationale was that the prerequisites had to accompany the steps. This is definitely an edge, or corner case.

Best Regards,

Bob Thomas

On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 2:55 AM, Joe Pairman <joepairman@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

I have a question about the DITA 1.3 troubleshooting topic, and I'm sending it to dita-comment because I'm not sure how (if at all) this question fits in the 1.3 review process.

Working with the experimental org.dita.troubleshooting plugin bundled with Oxygen 16.1, I noticed something about the content model for the remedy element. It can be empty, but if it has any content, it must have one of steps, steps-unordered, or steps-informal. 

Is this intentional? Might there be a situation where an empty remedy element is useful just to hang attributes on? If not, perhaps it would be easier all round to disallow empty remedy elements. Here's the relevant part of the DTD; removing the trailing question mark would disallow the empty element.

<!—                    LONG NAME: Remedy                          —>
<!ENTITY % remedy.content
                       “((%title;)?, (%responsibleParty;)?,
                         (%steps; | 
                           %steps-unordered; |
                           %steps-informal;)
                        )?”
>

Thanks for any info or thoughts.

Joe

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Bob Thomas

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