Metadata questions for the TC to consider

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

Hi, TC members.

We have a number of metadata issues to discuss. One comes as a result of a refinement to the spec that I have been working on; the others are the result of of review K: "Metadata and cascading metadata".

These questions will probably make up most of the agenda for tomorrow's call, so please take a look at them.

2.2 Reconciling topic and map metadata elements

I made some changes to this topic, after responding to a user who posted on dita-users about <othermeta> and whether it "cascaded". Basically, I added the 5th column to the table: "When set on the <map> element, does it apply to all topics referenced in the map?" Then Robert and I talked about the following questions:

• When metadata elements are specified on the <map> element, do they then also apply to submaps? To topics referenced in submaps?
• Does the behaviour differ based on whether a map is a root map or a submap?

Items from the DITAweb review

2.1.1 Processing cascading attributes in a map

This topic contains a normative statement that lists how processors need to process cascading attributes in a map (and submaps and maps referenced by submaps, etc.)

Comments by reviewers:

• "Are these the right steps to repeat? why wouldn't it go to step 7 in the repeat?"
• "... it's not clear to me whether processing for referenced maps and those which are referenced in referenced ones is the same or not. If I'm not missing something obvious here, maybe dissecting the processing steps and putting it together again with respect to these map levels could help in clarifying this process."
  

2.3.3 Cascading of "roles" from map to map

This is covered in two topics in the review PDF:

• 2.3.3 Cascading of roles from map to map
• 2.4.5 Example: Cascading of <topicref> roles from map to map

Points raised by reviewers:

• "This is an area of great misunderstanding within my clients. ... Personally, I have a difficult time explaining why it works this way at all."
• Â"Can we find a different term than "role" so we don't confuse it with @processing-role?
  

Kris

Attachment: ditaweb-review-k-revmarked.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document