RE: [dita] Indexterm: ... [ and mentions ]

1a. 
Would we permit mentions within indexterm?

 

<indexterm>major index group

   
<indexterm><mention>term</mention>

   </indexterm></indexterm>

 

1b. Alternatively, a weaker proposal: perhaps we 
could add an attribute to the mentions so that occurrences could be flagged to 
be included in the index. 

 

The 
processing of

  
<mention add-to-index="y">term</mention>

would 
be the same as for

  
<mention>term</mention><indexterm>term</indexterm>

 

2. 
Thinking about which alternative is better in principle, alternative 1a seems a 
more robust design. Alternative 1b violates the "one way to do things rule", 
and forces a fall-back approach.

 

It 
follows instead, "offer a path to a context-appropriate result from 
every context", which requires the complementary rule "support consistent 
functionality along all paths".

 

The 
"context-appropriate result" is not the same along all paths. You can't get 
nested index entries using attributes on a mention, but you can get a mention 
into the index. That's appropriate for mentions. If you wanted a nested index 
entry, you could have started with that.

 

Bruce

  
-----Original Message-----
From: Erik Hennum 
  [mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2005 1:35 
  PM
To: Eliot Kimber
Cc: 
  
Subject: Re: [dita] Indexterm: page 
  ranges

  
Hi, Eliot and TC:

Eliot Kimber 
  <> wrote on 10/04/2005 08:00:11 
  AM:

> ... for many authors index terms are precisely a marker 
  indicating the 
> occurrence of a specific word or phrase at a specific 
  location.
> 
> That is, while sometimes index entries are exactly 
  as Erik states (and 
> this is why they would normally generate a page 
  range in the rendered 
> index) it is not an exclusive, or necessarly 
  even typical, use of index 
> markers.

Point taken. As the 
  thread has noted previously, such occurrences of indexable language would be 
  better handled as mentions delimited with <keyword> or <term> 
  rather than with <indexterm> markers. Instead of requiring the writer to 
  provide the term twice as in the following example

  For the proper care and feeding of an 
    element<indexterm>element</indexterm>, you usually supply 
    content.
the processing might make use of the inline term for the 
  index:

  For the proper care and feeding of an <term>element</term>, 
    you usually supply content.
A mention would never span multiple pages 
  and thus wouldn't require a range.

Thanks,

Erik 
  Hennum