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AW: AW: [dita] Groups - DITA Proposed Feature #12021: Nesting sections (12021.html) uploaded
Hello Michael, as promised have talked to some people from the machinery industry regarding the nested sections issue. And it seems that most point have been clearified. But may have now the opportunity to better explain why some still insist of reflecting the need of some sort of nexted sections. This requirement is not connected to the planning of a document but with the way some authors are used to work. I have to state that many - even in the machinery industry - totaly follow the one section level per topic concept and would never leave that track. Especially people who are addicted to information matting. The wish of beeing able to split a section in subsections is comming from authors who write documentation in which the degree of complexity is growing while they are writing. It is always the same reason: An author is planning a document, splits it into topics, nests topics as required and starts to work. He/she writes the content of a topic, creates a couple of sections. While writing the sections he/she recognizes, that the structure is too flat and an additional level of hierarchy is needed. Of course, the author now can restructure the topic and split the sections in separate topics to get the required structure. In theory that is ok and would solve the problem, but practically, the author gets pretty angry as restructuring a topic with a couple of sections into several topics needs far more time than to work how he/she is used to work by just adding a next level into the existing one. And one point that may drive some crazy is the fact that maybe from 7 sections only one needs a deeper structure. And then to split that single topic in several to get the required nesting seems to be an overkill for some authors. Hope I was able to reflect what challanges these people. I fully agree, this is still a question of planning and this requirement should not challange us. But I just try to reflect what I hear from the field. Best regards Chris Von: SeicoDyne DITA [mailto:] Gesendet: Dienstag, 30. Oktober 2007 15:43 An: 'Michael Priestley' Cc: ; 'Grosso, Paul' Betreff: AW: AW: [dita] Groups - DITA Proposed Feature #12021: Nesting sections (12021.html) uploaded Yes Michael, for the pilot they answered that they will go with what is available. So it was no longer the case for them in the pilot. Nevertheless it will be a case again when they go for the productive part, especially regarding legacy data. Maybe with new documents they can find a way, but it seems that Novartis can not port existing documents into a standard DITA structure without splitting the content into sensless small crumbs. Chris Von: Michael Priestley [mailto:] Gesendet: Dienstag, 30. Oktober 2007 15:19 An: SeicoDyne DITA Cc: ; 'Grosso, Paul' Betreff: Re: AW: [dita] Groups - DITA Proposed Feature #12021: Nesting sections (12021.html) uploaded Hi Chris, When we reviewed this proposal with Novartis, they said it met their needs - is that no longer the case? In my own experience, there are different reasons for grouping content together at authoring time and at delivery time. You may want topics grouped together in a single document for authoring, and split up for delivery, or vice versa. This is one of the issues addressed by the chunking feature in 1.1. So if a group decides not to nest topics during authoring, but then wants to nest sections with multiple levels of headings, I have to wonder why they aren't just nesting topics. But I didn't think that was Novartis's problem. As to whether "topics stand on their own" vs. nesting sections - I think there are always some topics that do not stand on their own - especially overview topics. Yet there are still reasons to sometimes manage them or treat them as topics separately - and sometimes that decision about whether it stands on its own is really one the reuser has to make, not the author. If the author uses topics for things that have unique titles (ie introduce new subjects), and nests topics when they need complex content, that leaves the door open for reusers to choose topics to reuse, and make their own decision. If the author doesn't use topics, then their content is not addressable or chunkable by others - and the reuse door is closed. Michael Priestley Lead IBM DITA Architect http://dita.xml.org/blog/25 "SeicoDyne DITA" <> 10/30/2007 09:56 AM To Michael Priestley/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA, "'Grosso, Paul'" <> cc <> Subject AW: [dita] Groups - DITA Proposed Feature #12021: Nesting sections (12021.html) uploaded Yes indeed we had that case last year at Novartis, mainly regarding taking over legacy data. The main point that Novartis mentioned in that discussion was: 1st they decided that each topic relates to one file in the database, 2nd if they are going to split content of one topic in several topics, most of their content will loose the context. So content that belongs literally together would be split appart into separate files. This splitting would not only make the content highly difficult to manage, those topics would no longer be meaningful when they stand alone. Novartis has not yet decided if they go for DITA, Docbook or if they develop their own schema. From my last discussions I heared that they will go for DITA and call it DITA+ by bending or breaking our rules. As already mentioned, how Novartis will proceed is not yet decided, they are waiting to hear what the DITA TC decides. I would like to ask that question to the specialists of topic based authoring. What has more weight: - a topic is a unit of information that is meaningfull when it stands alone - a section in a topic is not alowed to contain sections Chris Kravogel SeicoDyne GmbH Eichenstrasse 16 CH-6015 Reussbühl Switzerland Tel: +41 41 534 66 97 Mob: +41 78 790 66 97 Skype: seicodyne www.seicodyne.com Member of the DITA Technical Committee Chairman of the DITA Machine Industry Subcommittee Von: Michael Priestley [mailto:] Gesendet: Dienstag, 30. Oktober 2007 14:34 An: Grosso, Paul Cc: Betreff: RE: [dita] Groups - DITA Proposed Feature #12021: Nesting sections (12021.html) uploaded My recollection is that it was primarily for use in creating regular groupings of sections or of content under sections for specialization purposes. This was the use case for Novartis that Chris brought forward, and also the use case from Paul Prescod who co-designed the original proposal. For example, with these extra levels, you can model something like: <messagebody> <problem> (from section) <userresponse> (from bodydiv) <analysis> (from section) <recovery> ... etc. There were some more complex use cases modeled in the original note series with Paul Prescod I believe. I think where people need to model freely titled nested divisions, the answer continues to be nesting topics rather than nesting sections - to try to prevent the bloating of topics into whole chapters or books of content (losing the constraints on topic size/complexity that are among the distinctions between DITA and DocBook). But where additional levels of organization are needed within a topic that do not represent new ideas or topics (and thus do not require new unique headings), I think this proposal gives the specializer considerably more freedom - as well as providing a general mechanism for grouping sections or blocks for the sake of conreffing a mixed range or for simplified conditional processing/metadata. Michael Priestley Lead IBM DITA Architect http://dita.xml.org/blog/25 "Grosso, Paul" <> 10/30/2007 09:12 AM To <> cc Subject RE: [dita] Groups - DITA Proposed Feature #12021: Nesting sections (12021.html) uploaded I was a little surprised to see this suggesting a bodydiv/sectiondiv element but still not allowing sections to nest, which is what I thought was meant by nesting sections. I thought one of the drivers of this requirement was to be able to model DocBook's nested sections more easily, but with the suggested model, this would be even harder. What are the benefits of this suggested model over simply allowing section to contain section? paul > -----Original Message----- > From: > [mailto:] > Sent: Tuesday, 2007 October 30 7:15 > To: > Subject: [dita] Groups - DITA Proposed Feature #12021: > Nesting sections (12021.html) uploaded > > This is the HTML version of proposal 12021 > > -- Mr. Jim Earley > > The document named DITA Proposed Feature #12021: Nesting sections > (12021.html) has been submitted by Mr. Jim Earley to the OASIS Darwin > Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC document repository. > > Document Description: > > > View Document Details: > http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/document.php > ?document_id=25904 > > Download Document: > http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/download.php > /25904/12021.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that generates this mail. 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