Normative rule about @class and @specializations required on the root element of every topic and map

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

Hi, folk.

The draft DITA 2.0 spec currently has the following normative rule:

"The root element of every topic and map MUST declare the following attributes:

• @class
• @specializations"

As part of the review of the proposal for "Relaxing specialization rules", we've had some commentary around this:

• Robert Anderson
  "If a topic has no integrated attribute domains in 2.0, the value of @specializations will be empty. Is this really a MUST? Should we clarify to indicate that this must be declared in the grammar, but does not necessarily need to have a value - I know that has caused confusion in the past for a tool that reported errors for empty @domains."
  
  
• Eliot Kimber
  

  "If @specializations is only relevant to attribute specializations then I think it would be sensible to allow it to be omitted, with an omitted @specializations being equivalent to specializations="" (empty or whitespace-only value).

  The counter to that approach is that you can't easily distinguish between really having no attribute specializations and just forgetting to provide @specializations, but in that case I think you'd get runtime failures if you actually had specializations that weren't declared (i.e., your @props specializations aren't recognized so things don't filter correctly).

  Seems like an edge case in practice since DITA defines a number of out-of-the box attribute specializations, including now all of the original conditional attributes"

• Kris Eberlein
  "We need to remove this normative rule from this topic. With the exception of specifying the @specializations attribute, it duplicates the normative statement that follows.
  
  What do we want to say about the @specialization attribute and where?"
  

--
Best,
Kris

Kristen James Eberlein
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
OASIS Distinguished Contributor
Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting LLC
www.eberleinconsulting.com
+1 919 622-1501; kriseberlein (skype)