dita message

Subject: Re: [dita] Cleaning up specializations of body elements

From: Eliot Kimber <ekimber@contrext.com>
To: Robert Anderson <robert.dan.anderson@oracle.com>, DITA TC <dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2021 15:26:57 -0500

I had no idea. Definitely should fix.

Cheers,

E.

--
Eliot Kimber
http://contrext.com
 

ïOn 4/28/21, 10:14 AM, "Robert Anderson" <dita@lists.oasis-open.org on behalf of robert.dan.anderson@oracle.com> wrote:


    Hi,


    I'd like to recommend another DITA 2.0 "cleanup" item, this one for specializations of <body> like the <conbody> and <refbody> elements. It requires a bit of history though.


    In DITA 1.0, all body elements could not be filtered. We didn't allow attributes like audience. I have a vague memory that they were treated like titles, basically "you should not be able to filter this because every concept should have a concept body."



    In DITA 1.1 this was updated for <body>, but not for specialized elements like <conbody>. As of DITA 1.1, the body element used all of the common / universal attributes, including the filter attributes. Conbody, taskbody, etc continued to drop the filter attributes,
     even though the elements themselves were optional.


    That continues today. Most specialized body elements have a confusing attribute list of "All the universal stuff, except for the filter attributes for unexplained reasons."


    This seems like a really old oversight we should clean up in DITA 2.0 -- for any specialized body element in the standard grammars, we should update the attribute list to match the attribute list for body itself.



    Thanks,
    Robert