In DITA 1.2 and in the latest draft of DITA 1.3, we have text that explains how to pull text into an empty, non-linking element that uses @keyref.
For example, <keyword keyref="prodname"/> or <term keyref="widget"/> The text has been cleaned up but the meaning is the same: DITA 1.2: " For elements on which no @href attribute is available (such as cite, dt, keyword, term, ph, indexterm, index-base, and indextermref, and their specializations), matching content is taken from the <keyword> or <term> elements within <keywords> within <topicmeta>. If more than one <keyword> or <term> is present, the matching content is taken from the first of them. " DITA 1.3: " If an element does not allow the @href attribute, content is taken from the first <keyword> or <term> element inside of <keywords> inside of the <topicmeta> . " Jarno just pointed out that <keywords> does not actually allow <term> -- so with the language above, replacement text can only come from <keyword>. Thus while the normative text is not exactly invalid, it's misleading / causing implementations to check for something that can't exist. We also examples that are invalid, because they show <term> as a child of <keywords>. The <keywords> element does allow <indexterm> -- but I'm as close to certain as I can be that the intent here was actually to match keyword or term.
I don't think we ever want to pull text from <indexterm> in a key definition into <keyword> or <term> in a topic.
I see the following options for cleaning up the language: Remove <term> from the language and examples.
It can't break anything (term was never valid), just cleans up language.
Change the text to read "<keyword> or <indexterm>".
I don't think this matches the original intent and may give different key resolution results in DITA 1.2 processors vs DITA 1.3 processors.
Add <term> as a child of <keywords> - suddenly the text is correct.
I consider this a no-go, it's too late to modify content models, just including for completeness.
Clearly, I favor option #1 as the easiest / only non-disruptive change, but I need TC signoff before making the update.
Thanks, Robert D Anderson IBM Authoring Tools Development Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit ( http://www.dita-ot.org/ )
