RE: Reasoning for not cascading <othermeta> metadata

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

Hi, John.

 

The DITA Technical Committee discussed your e-mail at today’s weekly call. Basically, the <othermeta> element exists to provide a general-purpose element that people can use to specify metadata when an existing element does not convey the appropriate semantic meaning. Because it is a general purpose element – and we do not know what people will use it for – it does not cascade.

 

While we understand that Nokia wants <othermeta> to cascade, we do not think it appropriate to change this aspect of the element for DITA 2.0. Nor do we want to add a new general-purpose element designed for metadata which cascades.

 

So you have several options for how to handle this:

• Build an override to the DITA-OT to make <othermeta> (or <othermeta>cascade. According to Robert Anderson, this is a simple override to implement.
• Specialize an element to use instead of <othermeta>. You could specialize <category> to create a <usergoal> element. This would require that Nokia has Nokia-specific document-type shells in place, so that you could incorporate the element specialization.

 

If Nokia does not have company-specific document-type shells, we strongly encourage you to implement them. Without Nokia-specific document-type shells, you cannot integrate any specializations, chose which domains you want integrated, add constraints or expansion modules, and so forth. While the DITA TC ships sample document-type shells with DITA versions, they are samples – and not optimized for authoring or a particular company’s needs.

 

Best,

Kris

 

Kristen James Eberlein
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
Owner, Eberlein Consulting LLC
kris@eberleinconsulting.com

Skype: kriseberlein; voice: +1 (919) 622-1501

 

From: Kirkilis, John (Nokia - US/Austin) <john.kirkilis@nokia.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2022 9:24 PM
To: Kristen James Eberlein <kris@eberleinconsulting.com>; dita-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: Reasoning for not cascading <othermeta> metadata

 

Whoops. Auto-correct error.

 

What I meant to ask is why does one "other" cascade and the other one does not (<othermeta> vs @otherprops), regardless of whether one is an element and one is a conditional attribute.

 

They are both meant to handle use cases where the built-in choices are insufficient.

 

I asked Jarno how we, Nokia, would extend the processing to do this ourselves in DITA-OT, and he highly recommended not doing it. I don't recall his specific reason however, but could find out. It might have required that we fork the OT project, which would be a very last resort.

 

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From: Kirkilis, John (Nokia - US/Austin) <john.kirkilis@nokia.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2022 8:35 PM
To: kris eberleinconsulting.com <kris@eberleinconsulting.com>; dita-comment@lists.oasis-open.org <dita-comment@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: Re: Reasoning for not cascading <othermeta> metadata

 

Following up after DITA-OT day. The conditional attribute “otherprops” cascades, so how does its use case differ ?

 

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From: kris eberleinconsulting.com <kris@eberleinconsulting.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 2, 2022 8:18:20 PM
To: Kirkilis, John (Nokia - US/Austin) <john.kirkilis@nokia.com>; dita-comment@lists.oasis-open.org <dita-comment@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: RE: Reasoning for not cascading <othermeta> metadata

 

Hi, John.

 

<othermeta> is a general purpose element. There is no knowing what people might use it for, so it does not cascade.

 

You certainly can customize your processing so that specific values for <othermeta> will cascade …

 

Best,

Kris

 

Kristen James Eberlein
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
Owner, Eberlein Consulting LLC
kris@eberleinconsulting.com

Skype: kriseberlein; voice: +1 (919) 622-1501

 

From: Kirkilis, John (Nokia - US/Austin) <john.kirkilis@nokia.com>
Sent: Saturday, October 1, 2022 9:27 AM
To: dita-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [dita-comment] Reasoning for not cascading <othermeta> metadata

 

Hi Kris and company,

 

We’re building a new HTML5 HelpCenter in React that integrates with our products. For faceted search, metadata is essential.

 

The spec indicates in the cascade table that othermeta does not cascade as do the standard metadata elements.

 

I have two questions:

 

1. Can you explain the reasoning for this exception so I can better understand the matter?
2. How have you or others propagating <othermeta> metadata to child topicrefs?

 

Best Regards,

 

John