Unfortunately, there is no way for me to
indicate an index term that applies to the title of a topic, since index term
is not allowed in title. I have to use the prolog instead to point to the topic
title or short description. So the second bullet item below will not work. I
don’t want to have to insert the index term in the first body paragraph,
which might appear on a different page from the title.
I want to use indexterm range elsewhere,
of course, and don’t want the behavior constrained in a manner that I don’t
expect.
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: Dana Spradley [mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006
12:18 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
