What if we look at this new feature as throwing a
switch?
If a writer doesn't make use of it, and refrains from inserting even
one ranged indexterm into a book, then they get 1.0 pointwise
processing.
If, however, a user inserts even one ranged indexterm into a book, then
the ambiguity inherent in their legacy indexterms is resolved as
follows:
indexterms that appear in the body of the text are considered
pointwise. If they aren't, then the writer needs to insert new start
attributes and end elements into the body of the text.
indexterms that appear in topic metadata are considered to apply
to the topic as a whole, and as such generate a page range in the index
entry that corresponds to the page range of the topic. If the writer
doesn't like this, they need to go in and move the offending indexterms
to the most appropriate point in the body of the text.
Dana
Chris Wong wrote:
"A distinction is sometimes
made between continued discussion of a subject (index, for example,
34-36) and individual references to the subject on a series of pages
(34, 35, 36). " -- 17.9, Chicago Manual of Style
I'd say that the difference
between a page range indexterm pair and a series of individual
indexterms would make that distinction. Never assume that the page
references should be combined.
I'd ask whether clarifying an
ambiguity in the standard is incompatible. If we strive to cater to
every possible interpretation of any ambiguity in the spec, we'd drive
ourselves batty. I'm of the opinion that our spec really says what the
user can do and makes no attempt at a comprehensive list of
what a user cannot do. The latter would need an
inconveniently large truck to hold the resulting document. So if a user
writes DITA and expects processing behavior that the standard does not
expressively support, that user should not expect that nonstandard
behavior to be implemented by everyone. Indeed, expecting an unpromised
feature of DITA would easily lead to interoperability problems even within
a DITA version, let alone across versions.
As I see it, this is probably
not that big an issue because the XML itself will continue to be valid,
and the user can continue to use legacy processing. Such XML cannot
interoperate across DITA 1.0 implementations anyway.
Chris
From: JoAnn
Hackos [mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 1:47 PM
To: Grosso, Paul;
Subject: RE: [dita] Are indexterm ranges backwards
incompatible?
I would not
agree with the result assumptions. What mechanism exists for the
numbers 5, 6, 7, and 8 to be concatenated into a range 5-8? A
continuous discussion ranging over pages 5-8 does not mean the same as
points referenced by the number 5, 6, 7, and 8. The indexer should be
solely responsible for determining when a range of pages is used, not
have some automatic decision made.
JoAnn
JoAnn T. Hackos, PhD
President
Comtech Services, Inc.
710 Kipling Street, Suite
400
Denver, CO 80215
303-232-7586
joannhackos Skype
www.comtech-serv.com
From:
Grosso, Paul [mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, August
15, 2006 11:21 AM
To:
Subject: RE: [dita]
Are indexterm ranges backwards incompatible?
I generally agree with Bruce
here.
But I also
need to take issue with:
new ranged indexterms
they add would cause these old point indexterms to be misinterpreted
With our
existing indexterm markup, you cannot distinguish between use of
indexterms and ranges by looking at the resulting index. An indexterm
marks a point, and the page on which that point falls will be included
in the resulting index. An index range marks a start and end point, and
all pages starting with the one on which the start point falls and
ending with the one on which the end point falls will be included in
the resulting index.
Unless one
has a fancier indexing process whereby one can, say, request a bold
page number in the index for the most important reference and italic
page numbers for pages on which there are related figures, etc., there
is no distinction among page numbers in the resulting index.
Looking at
the resulting index, one cannot tell if index-page-range markup was
used to create that index or not. A resulting index entry of:
cheese 2,
5-8, 12
could have
been generated by pointwise indexterm markup throughout the source that
just so happened to end up being points on pages 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 12.
paul
From: Esrig, Bruce (Bruce)
[mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, 2006
August 15 11:53
To: Dana Spradley
Cc:
Subject: RE: [dita]
Are indexterm ranges backwards incompatible?
On the other
hand, Dana,
This logic
could be applied to outlaw any extension, since every user would have
to review every document to determine whether they had intended to use
the extension.
With DITA
1.1, we clarify that an indexterm designates a point at which to start
reading about the indexed subject. The DITA 1.1 conceit is that this
was true all along. In DITA 1.0, this aspect of the interpretation was
unspecified because there was no way to specify anything else. But if
it even makes sense to take sides on this, it's possible to argue that
the default disambiguation is the DITA 1.1 way. Indexing practice
typically presumes that an index entry refers to a point at which to
start reading.
For those
who wish to specify a range of pages possibly not starting at the top
of a topic, a new capability is provided that permits such a
specification. The specification of a range generates a page range in
outputs that have page numbers, such as PDF files. In other outputs, it
generates a reference to the start page only.
Best wishes,
Bruce Esrig
From: Dana Spradley
[mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday,
August 15, 2006 12:41 PM
To:
Subject: [dita]
Are indexterm ranges backwards incompatible?
After this morning's
meeting, I'm starting to think that maybe ranged indexterm should be
considered backwards incompatible with DITA 1.0.
In 1.0, it is ambiguous whether indexterms point to discussions
confined to a single page, or to extended discussions that begin on a
certain page.
Introducing ranged indexterms removes that ambiguity.
Users who want to make use of ranged indexterms would need to go back
through their entire document set and replace current point indexterms
with ranged indexterms where appropriate - otherwise any new ranged
indexterms they add would cause these old point indexterms to be
misinterpreted.
Doesn't that amount to backwards incompatibility?
--Dana
