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Subject: Q&A from DITA Briefing #1 (Intro to DITA) -- 5/25/2004
DITA Briefing #1, "Intro to DITA" -- 2004-05-25
Questions and Answers
DD: indicates Don Day
MP: indicates Michael Priestley
Sharon --
- Question about titles -- are they part of the content or the
metadata?
- MP: Titles are content of topics, but DITA topic
content also provides <titlealts> which includes
navtitle and searchtitle, which are effectively
metadata in that they are optionally available for
application roles that the content title is less
suitable for. An example might be a shorter navtitle
to fit a known width constraint in a left-hand
navigation pane, or a search title that includes
a product name in order to match expected search
strategies.
Scott Tsao --
- Reuse of design, reuse of content, reuse of processing -- just
wanted a clarification of what that means. His understanding
was already correct.
- Does DITA restrict you to XSLT for processing?
- MP: No, but Michael does like it; it fits well with
DITA. DITA was originally designed to work
specifically with the W3C-based processing
architecture, including CSS, XSLT, XSL-FO, XLink, and
so forth. For your topics to be interoperable with
other DITA users, any processing based on other tools
should nevertheless have similar behaviors for
specialization (class-based lookup, safe fallthrough
to base classes, conref resolution, etc.)
- When you talk about reuse of design, content, and processing,
does that mean reuse of Schema components, of instance
content, and of XSLT routines?
- MP: Yes to all.
- Confused when MP says he wants to use the map to capture the
metadata, whereas the topic itself doesn't need to carry the
metadata.
- MP: You can author the metadata in either place. You
get the most reuse possibilities when it's outside the
topic. It is designed to be additive.
- If I have a set of components I want to standardize, and one
of them is reused in many places and I want to store it in
a library, would I create a topic for the definition?
- MP: This is more of a best practice question: how
should new specializations make use of the various
levels of design reuse and content reuse in DITA? For
example, in a glossary application, should the new
design be based on definition list or on nested
concepts? Either would work. Michael favors reuse at
the topic level for this, but the right design will
probably depend on other design factors that will
differ between communities. DITA's features (map,
topic, conref, etc.) enable a wide number of
information architectures to be incorporated;
community agreement will be the most important factor
in defining how/whether that IA interoperates with
other information architectures.
Wading a bit deeper here, the value of a topic-based
set of definitions is that the topic specializations
can be very specific, providing support for etymology,
pronunciation, synonums, usage, etc.. Upon output,
only the basic term/def can be output to a specialized
definition list that serves as an output-specific view
of the separately maintained topic-based definitions.
There are many cases of use-driven differences in how
common structures might be supported in
specializations. Call-center issues (topic level) can
be abstracted into QandA lists (FAQs), message
definitions (topic level) can be abstracted into
message sets for conversion into resource bundles,
etc..
Padma Neppalli (Intel) --
- How do you refer to something that's buried somewhere inside
a topic?
- MP: Most DITA elements have an ID attribute and
a conref attribute. You can reuse content from an
element with an ID by pointing to it from another
element of the same type with a conref attribute.
- DD: Reuse is not only topic-to-topic but also within
a topic.
- When are conrefs validated?
- MP: At build-time, when you create the output
tranform.
Also note: "valid" means more than just "is the
content ok to copy over" - it checks whether the rules
are the same in both places - i.e., you can only reuse
a paragraph from someplace where paragraphs are valid,
and you can only reuse paragraphs that have the same
element content rules. This will be explained in more
depth in a later presentation.
- DD: Editing tools often will show you broken links
also. It can tell you whether or not you are pointing
to a valid conref, and helps you select only valid
content. Similar to ID/IDREF which does not work well
in a cross-document architecture like DITA.
Eric from BMC Software --
- How does DITA create the equivalent of an index?
- DD: DITA topics contain an index term element.
They can be nested for creating hierarchical
indexes.
- MP: The public tool doesn't include indexing
tools, but the markup is there. MP thinks it's
better to do the indexing on the map level -- it's
easier to control index design.
- DD: But if you put the index data into individual
elements, they can be picked up wherever those
elements are conref'd.
- MP: This means you can't get rid of them when you
need to. Main point is that indexing is something
you do in terms of a collection of topics - your
choice of first and second level headings is
determined by the size and subjects of your
topics. If these choices are embedded in your
content, then your content will create bad index
entries when it is reused in a new context.
IBM still relies upon their SGML indexing
tools -- they convert backwards to SGML whenever
they need an index, and use those tools to create
an index. Obviously this isn't helpful to anyone
else, and MP is hoping that DITA-based transforms
for indexing will be available at some point.
There *is* a full indexing ability, just not fully
implemented.
- Elliot Kimber: Index processing that's part of
the DocBook XSLT can probably be ported to DITA
with minimal effort.
- DD: Reusing legacy processes -- If you already
have a legacy processor, you can port DITA
backwards to it so you don't lose that tool. Thus
what MP presented as a potential shortcoming might
be a benefit for people who have useful legacy
tools already working.
- MP: Good point for the general rule about legacy
compatibility. That said, indexing is a likely
candidate for standard processing.
Scott Tsao --
- Does anyone know about UDEF (a particular standard used by
airlines) and a possible intersection/overlap with DITA?
- DD: Eric knows about this -- let's take
this to the mailing list.
Mary Parmelee from SAS Institute --
- Are non-TC members invited to subsequent briefings?
- DD: Yes. Go to the TC website for current
information. Just let Don know if there will be
a need for him to reserve additional lines, and
try to call in from local conference rooms if
possible to conserve lines.
No more questions from the presentation. Keep an eye on the website
for any changing news.
___________________________________________________________
Seraphim Larsen ICG Technical Publications
Sr. Technical Writer Intel Corporation
(480) 552-6504 Chandler, AZ
The content of this message is my personal opinion only.
Although I am an employee of Intel, the statements I make
here in no way represent Intel's position on the issue, nor
am I authorized to speak on behalf of Intel on this matter.
___________________________________________________________
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