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RE: [dita] Keywords in DITA

From: Michael Priestley
To: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 15:14:00 -0000

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Subject: RE: [dita] Keywords in DITA




From: Michael Priestley <[email protected]>
To: "Paul Prescod" <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 10:14:21 -0500




I don't think the current examples are
necessarily wrong. The keyword element is not intended just for programming
keywords, especially when semantic specializations of keyword are available
such as <apiname>.  Given that <keyword> has very little
semantics of its own, and given that specializations of it exist for many
specific cases, coming up with a generic example that isn't more suited
for a specialization is actually pretty hard. Generic search terms from
the text do seem reasonable to me, as an example of when to use <keyword>
specifically rather than one of its specializations.

Michael Priestley

[email protected]

Dept PRG IBM Canada  phone: 416-915-8262

Toronto Information Development







"Paul Prescod"
<[email protected]> 
03/08/2005 08:02 AM




To
Michael Priestley/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA


cc
<[email protected]>


Subject
RE: [dita] Keywords in DITA









Thank you. Your description clarifies things.
This is what I would have thought except were it not for the example in
the specification under "keywords".
 
The following example is metadata from an
installation task: 
<prolog><keywords> <keyword>installing</keyword>
<keyword>uninstalling</keyword> <keyword>prerequisites</keyword>
<keyword>helps</keyword> <keyword>wizards</keyword>
</keywords> </prolog> 
I would have understood if the example was:
<prolog><keywords> <keyword>class</keyword>
<keyword>if</keyword> <keyword>else</keyword> <keyword>elseif</keyword>
<keyword>assert</keyword> </keywords> </prolog>

Those are keywords in the sense that you define it in your
email.


From: Michael Priestley [mailto:[email protected]]

Sent: Mon 3/7/2005 7:32 PM

To: Paul Prescod

Cc: [email protected]

Subject: Re: [dita] Keywords in DITA




Hi Paul, welcome to the list.



The reason we support keyword in both locations (as well as a bunch of
specializations of keywords) is to allow the same range of semantic specificity
in both places. For example, <apiname> is a type (specialization)
of keyword. If we have an occurrence of an <apiname> in content,
we may also want to index it specifically for search, if the occurrence
is significant. So we add it to the keyword list for the topic. But just
because it is a keyword for the topic doesn't mean it stops being an <apiname>.
In both contexts, being able to distinguish <apiname>blue</apiname>
from <wintitlel>blue</wintitle> is worthwhile. So we support
the same keyword element in both places.



In other words, <apiname> as content and <apiname> as keyword
for search are both still <apiname>s, so it doesn't make sense to
have a different set of elements just because they are processed differently:
their containment context (body or prolog)  is enough, and allows
us to infer processing behavior without undermining the common semantics.



Michael Priestley

[email protected]







References:

RE: [dita] Keywords in DITA
From: "Paul Prescod" <[email protected]>






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