Re: [dita] Stage 1 proposal: outputclass for DITAVAL properties

[Dawn Stevens <dawn.stevens@Comtech-serv.com>]

Would this replace all the style attributes currently available? Or simply be in addition to?

 

Speaking from the point of view of working with clients on their stylesheets, it gives certainly more robust formatting and I know Iâve wished we had such capability. But on the other had I would immediate try to limit my client to deciding on only a few things like a ânew or changed contentâ style or otherwise I can envision having to constantly make adjustments to stylesheets every time they added a new value to an flagging attribute and therefore wanted a new outputclass. Often my clients at least understand how to create a DITAVAL file with those attributes, but they donât know how to update their stylesheet to define outputclasses. It could make a difference of what they can do on their own and what they need someone else to do.

 

I know itâs not really the committeeâs problem to worry about the âjust because you can doesnât mean you shouldâ side of things, but itâs something to consider.

 

Dawn

 

 

 

From: dita <dita@lists.oasis-open.org> on behalf of Robert D Anderson <robander@us.ibm.com>
Date: Tuesday, June 4, 2019 at 6:07 PM
To: dita <dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: [dita] Stage 1 proposal: outputclass for DITAVAL properties

 

Today, DITAVAL lets you slap a lot of specific styles on a metadata property. (I say a lot, but it's a relatively small set of specific styles, compared to something like CSS). You can have this:
<prop att="platform" value="MyOS" backcoler="red" style="underline"/>

The meaning there is -- wherever you have platform="MyOS", give it a red background and underline it.

Today, DITA has @outputclass on nearly every element (it will be universal in 2.0). That's largely intended as a place to hang CSS styles -- put outputclass="whatever" on an element and you can use CSS to associate that token with any CSS style. Generally easy in HTML, while the method of adding styles in PDF varies more by tool.

What if we add outputclass to DITAVAL properties? So, for example, you can have this:
<prop att="platform" value="MyOS" outputclass="myos"/>
or
<revprop value="rev123" outputclass="myrev"/>

Where today you pick a specific set of styles from what DITAVAL allows, and associate those with a property, this would mean "treat this token as if it specified outputclass="myos". Another way of thinking about that would be, "Wherever I have platform="MyOS" or rev="rev123", let me associate this CSS selector with it." With HTML output this would pretty quickly and easily give you access to the full range of CSS for styling. For formats like PDF, just like with @outputclass today, how you make use of the style will vary by tool.

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