dita — archive

Re: [dita] clarifying the href attribute in the language reference

From: Eliot Kimber
To: [email protected]
Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 19:24:00 -0000

Grosso, Paul wrote: > So it sounds like it is already the case that the href values > are always URIs and we just need to clean up the language a > bit in the DITA 1.1 Language Reference Manual to make sure > this is clear. I made comments to that effect some time ago and I thought that my suggested changes were both sufficient and were incorporated, but I agree that: "Non-DITA targets use standard URL syntax." Is both unnecessary and potentially confusing (and inaccurate since they may use URI syntax unless it's our intent to specifically limit DITA processing to URLs, which I don't think we want to do). What is actually the case is that *non-topic element targets* use *non-standard* fragment identifier syntax (the overall syntax of the URI conforms to the URI spec since the URI spec itself does not specify the details of fragment identifiers). The values of href= attributes must be URIs. The fragment identifiers, when used, must conform to the rules specified in the DITA specification. If the spec doesn't say that clearly and directly, it still needs to be fixed. Cheers, E. -- W. Eliot Kimber Professional Services Innodata Isogen 8500 N. Mopac, Suite 402 Austin, TX 78759 (214) 954-5198 [email protected] www.innodata-isogen.com