Re: [dita-lightweight-dita] Refactoring HDITA with custom tags

From
Mark Giffin <>
Date
2016-05-11T03:51:01+00:00
ID
Thread
Re: [dita-lightweight-dita] Refactoring HDITA with custom tags
Hi Michael,

      

      If you are talking about custom tags as in late-model W3C web
      components, a custom tag can be pretty lightweight, since the
      browser itself will support this capability (not sure if all major
      browsers turn them on by default yet). You don't have to load an
      external library necessarily. It needs a bit of _javascript_ that
      can be inside the HTML file itself. I'm not sure about
      performance, I'm sure it depends on what you're doing.

      

      Google's Polymer requires substantial external libraries and
      Polymer often gets confused with W3C web components because it's
      related, but I'm not talking about Polymer. I recall some info
      about Polymer having some performance problems but that was a year
      ago.

      

      This page gives a simple example of a W3C custom element with some
      CSS to style it.

      

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Web_Components/Custom_Elements

      

      Please excuse if I completely misunderstood your question!

      

      Mark Giffin

      Mark Giffin Consulting, Inc.

      http://markgiffin.com/

      

      On 5/10/2016 12:47 PM, Michael Priestley wrote:

    

    How much freight does
        custom tags add to
        a displayable HTML page? Is there any impact on performance?

      

        Michael Priestley, Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM)

        Enterprise Content Technology Strategist

        

      http://dita.xml.org/blog/michael-priestley

      

      

      

      From:      
         Carlos Evia
        <>

      To:      
         

      Date:      
         05/10/2016 02:46 PM

      Subject:    
           [dita-lightweight-dita]
        Refactoring HDITA with custom tags

      Sent by:    
           <>

      

      

      

      Apologies (in advance) but I won't make it to the
        05/16
        call. Continuing the conversation about refactoring HDITA, I
        wonder how
        much mixing of HTML5 custom tags (Don's proposal) and custom
        data attributes
        (Michael's original approach) we should keep. I have been
        experimenting
        with Don's approach to extend HTML5's native elements to mimic
        XDITA/DITA
        tags, and I really think we should explore that as HDITA's
        evolution path.
        It makes authoring much easier than having to remember the data
        attributes.
      

      I compare here both approaches with the
        proto-example
        included in the Technical Communication paper I wrote with
        Michael:

      

      Current HDITA model (based on Michael's 2014 idea)

      

      <article data-hd-class="task">

      <h1>How to do something</h1>

        <p>Introduction to this specific
        task</p>

      <section data-hd-class="task/context">

      <p>Use only when ready</p>

      </section>

      <section data-hd-class="task/steps-informal">

      <ol>

      <li><p>Plan
        something</p></li>

      <li><p>Do
        something</p></li>

      <li><p>Evaluate
        something</p></li>

      </ol>

      </section>

      <section data-hd-class="topic/example">

      <p>Like this</p>

      </section>

      </article>

      

      My aberrant take on Don's proposed use of custom
        tags:
      

      

      <article-task>

      <h1>How to do something</h1>

      <p>Introduction to this specific
        task</p>

      <section-context>

      <p>Use only when ready</p>

      </section-context>

      <section-steps>

      <ol>

      <li><p>Plan
        something</p></li>

      <li><p>Do
        something</p></li>

      <li><p>Evaluate
        something</p></li>

      </ol>

      </section-steps>

      <section-example>

      <p>Like this</p>

      </section-example>

      </article-task>

      

      Is there a third way that combines both approaches?
        What
        would we gain? Right now, moving to custom tags will only break
        a) my former
        students' projects, and b) Jarno's HDITA plug-in (which was
        pretty much
        his experimental contribution to our DITA NA presentation this
        year).

      If this is a good idea, we (I) can work on
        re-mapping
        HDITA and new examples.... and then we can move on to the
        headache of MarkDITA,
        MDITA or however we want to call the Markdown flavor of
        Lightweight DITA.

      

      Comments?

      --- 

      Carlos Evia, Ph.D.

      Director of
        Professional and
        Technical Writing

      Associate Professor of
        Technical
        Communication

      Department of English

      Center for
        Human-Computer Interaction

      Virginia Tech

      Blacksburg, VA
        24061-0112

      (540)200-8201