RE: [docbook-tc] relatedlink element?

["Rowland, Larry" <larry.rowland@hp.com>]

Related Links were to deal with modular authoring where you wanted to link to something if it was in the document after assembly but just provide a textual reference if it was not.  It is somewhat more complex than a simple link, since there might be the issue of alternative text in some linguistic environments.  It can be handled using conditional text, if there is a condition of "module is present in this assembly" available to trigger it with.  The idea was simple, and can be common (we dealt with it by conditional text for content included in the help system and in a user guide, but it required setting some global values to trigger the conditions).

It is a good idea, but I don't think we every fleshed it out.  I would definitely not hold things up for it, although it would be a nice feature to have and would be much less burdensome than using conditional text for the same thing.

LRR

-----Original Message-----
From: docbook-tc@lists.oasis-open.org [mailto:docbook-tc@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Norman Walsh
Sent: Monday, May 28, 2012 11:15 AM
To: docbook-tc@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [docbook-tc] relatedlink element?

"Bob Stayton" <bobs@sagehill.net> writes:
> I've reviewed all the minutes and the mail archive, and it appears
> that relatedlink was never approved. It came up in 2010 during the
> development of the topic and assembly elements. The TC minutes discuss
> adding it as an inline element, and there was a discussion of
> reltables which we developed samples for but found too complicated and
> postponed until after 5.1 Then we got into discussing the
> relationships element in assembly, and there was no more mention of
> relatedlink. Did we decide to not pursue relatedlink, or did we simply
> forget about it?

I'm afraid I don't recall. Larry, in your mind, does relatedlink
fulfill a role that we're missing?

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | Everything has been said before,
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | but since nobody every listens we
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | have to keep going back and
                                   | beginning all over again.--André
                                   | Gide