I thought it might be worth pointing out that the idiomatic way to tag descriptions/summaries in Markdown, at least in static site generators such as Jekyll, Hugo, Octopress, and Pelican,
is to include them in the metadata at the top of the file. Jekyll, Hugo, and Octopress use YAML, so it would look like this:
---
title: Some Title
description: Short description goes here and is available for use on index/home pages as well as in the meta description
keywords: one keyword, another, and another
---
(Jekyll uses “excerpt:” instead of “description:”.)
Pelican uses Multimarkdown metadata, so it’s even simpler; you omit the dashed lines from the top and bottom of the block. But the description key is “summary:”.
The typical default if you do
not explicitly set a description is to use the first paragraph of the post.
References:
https://gohugo.io/content/front-matter/
http://sweetme.at/2013/08/06/how-to-set-your-octopress-description-and-keyword-meta-tags/
https://jekyllrb.com/docs/posts/#post-excerpts
http://docs.getpelican.com/en/3.6.3/content.html
https://github.com/fletcher/MultiMarkdown/wiki/MultiMarkdown-Syntax-Guide#metadata
Apologies is this is ground that’s been covered before — I try to keep up with the discussions but have had gaps.
Regards,
Joe
—
Joe Pairman
Mekon
Tel: +44-20-8722-8400
Mobile: +44-7472-745-063?
Skype: joepairman
From:
<> on behalf of Carlos Evia <>
Date: Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at 20:32
To: Keith Schengili-Roberts <>, "" <>
Subject: Re: [dita-lightweight-dita] Short descriptions in LwDITA
Keith,
Section 6.8 of the CommonMark spec says we can use any raw HTML or XML, so from their side there's nothing they could add... they just recommend using raw HTML or XML. To be honest, the shortdesc in MDITA could even be <shortdesc>...
Joe and Scott,
I hear you loud and clear: the short description is important and deserves its own markup. Let's see what other voices from the SC say.
Best,
Carlos
--
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
On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 2:35 PM, Keith Schengili-Roberts <
> wrote:
Here's a crazy thought: has anyone thought about approaching the people who manage CommonMark Markdown about the possibility of *them* adding shortdesc to their spec?
I'd be happy to make the case on
https://talk.commonmark.org/ to see what they say...
Cheers!
-
Keith Schengili-Roberts
Market Researcher and DITA Evangelist
IXIASOFT
825 Querb es, Suite 200, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H2V 3X1
tel
+ 1 514 279-4942
/ toll free
+ 1 877 279-4942
/
www.ixiasoft.com
From:
<
> on behalf
of Scott Hudson <
>
Sent: Tuesday, February 7, 2017 2:07:16 PM
To: Storbeck, Joe; Carlos Evia;
Subject: Re: [dita-lightweight-dita] Short descriptions in LwDITA
I would also support the retention of shortdesc, especially with its use in supporting SEO and display in search results. It is semantically distinct, and IMO should not be
oversimplified to using the first paragraph.
Thanks and best regards,
--Scott
Scott Hudson
Content Strategist
Digital Aviation Learning & Development
Voting member:
OASIS DocBook TC, Publishers SC
OASIS DITA TC, Tech Comm SC, LW DITA SC, Learning Content SC
OASIS Augmented Reality in Information Products (ARIP)
TC
Jeppesen
Digital Aviation
Boeing
55 Inverness Drive East
Englewood, CO 80112
www.jeppesen.com
From:
<
> on behalf of "Storbeck, Joe" <
>
Date: Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at 12:00 PM
To: Carlos Evia < >, " " <
>
Subject: RE: [dita-lightweight-dita] Short descriptions in LwDITA
As a co-author of a White Paper on the importance of short descriptions ( https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/57803/DITA-Adoption_2016_Writing-Effective-Short-Descriptions.pdf ),
I strongly vote to keep the short description tag and NOT to default to the first paragraph.
Regards,
Joe
Joseph Storbeck
Senior Structured Data Analyst
1717
Universal City Blvd
Universal
City, TX 78148
Phone:
(512) 438-9457
Fax:
(210) 616-0088
e-mail:
JANA, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
If you have received this e-mail by mistake please inform us and destroy this e-mail and any documents it might contain.
From:
[ mailto: ]
On Behalf Of Carlos Evia
Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2017 12:46 PM
To:
Subject: [dita-lightweight-dita] Short descriptions in LwDITA
Dear Lightweight DITA subcommittee members,
We didn't have time in yesterday's call to talk about an issue that has been buried in the agenda for a few weeks.
As I work on the committee note and detail (used as a verb here) the list of DITA elements in LwDITA and their equivalents in XDITA, HDITA, and MDITA,
I go back to the question about shortdesc and how to represent it across our authoring formats.
In the initial MDITA draft I proposed to Michael back in... ooops... 2014??... shortdesc did not exist, and the first paragraph in a Markdown file was
by default treated as a short description.
Then, Jarno asked "What if the topic only consists of one long paragraph?" and we decided to keep things simple and use "raw" HTML/HDITA in MDITA for elements
that do not exist in Markdown but would be ok with CommonMark.
As a result, now a short descriptions is <p data-hd-class="shortdesc"> both in HDITA and MDITA.
Question:
- Should we go back to just treating the first paragraph in MDITA as a short description?
- If we do that, do we really need <p data-hd-class="shortdesc"> in HDITA (HTML5?)
- And do we even need that in XDITA as <shortdesc> if we are just defaulting to first paragraphs?
Best,
Carlos
--
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
