If we follow your suggestion then we're
throwing a switch that requires every writer currently using indexterms
in prologs to rewrite their content to preserve their existing behavior.
I think it makes the most sense both
from a new user perspective (per JoAnn's indexing best practice points)
and from an existing user perspective (per my backwards compatibility points)
to say that indexterms without ranges behave exactly the same way tomorrow
as they do today.
If a particular project wants the behavior
you describe, they can write their content that way (ie with index range
elements), or override processing to change the default behavior (ie get
range outputs from indexterm markup).
Michael Priestley
IBM DITA Architect and Classification Schema PDT Lead
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25
Dana Spradley <>
08/15/2006 02:17 PM
To
Chris Wong <>
cc
JoAnn Hackos <>,
"Grosso, Paul" <>,
Subject
Re: [dita] Are indexterm ranges backwards
incompatible?
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
