Hi
Bruce.
If I understand your email correctly, you are
questioning the fact that the current DITA model could be used in this specific
case.
My uneducated answer would be a specialization
similar to this (uneducated because I might be missing part of the
context):
<lucenttask
otherprops="lang(1)">
<shortdesc>Short description of the full
procedure</shortdesc>
<lucenttaskbody>
<steps>
<step>
<cmd> what to do in Lang 1
<stepresult>what you have accomplished <!-- The label is not
necessary in the XML -->
<related-step
href="conreference to the full procedure in Lang 2#correspondingcmd">
<!-- output may or not include text of related cmd in lang
2 -->
</step>
<step>
<cmd> what to do in Lang 1 for next step
<stepresult>what you have accomplished <!-- The label is not
necessary in the XML -->
<related-step
href="conreference to the full procedure in Lang 2#correspondingcmd">
<!-- output may or not include text of related cmd in lang
2 -->
</step>
</steps>
<taskbody>
<related-links>
<link href="cross-reference to
the full procedure in Lang 2"> <!-- Layout may include shortdesc of
referenced procedure -->
</related-links>
</task>
Is this a specialization, yes. Is this an issue? If you are going
to base a whole project on the fact that you can reference another task in
parallel, why not take the time to specialize and have a model that matches your
specific needs? Creating a specialization is not a long task to perform, being
able to change your mind on the presentation based on semantics might however
save you a lot of time.
What if you
decide to hide this info to some people? What if you want to display the
text in gray or with a different background-color so that readers see
it as extra information, not core info? What if you want to generate reports on
what references to what? What if you don't want to see the preceding label
anymore? What if you want to inforce your model so that authors
always write the stepresults before the related-steps? What if
related-steps are treated differently then other regular xrefs so that they
actually extract the text from the referenced cmd?
This sounds to me like a big enough requirement to
justify sending a new request to the development team. A few hours of
development on the core model might save you long hours of
hacking.
