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Re: [dita] Why There are Constraints on Conref
maybe "referencing element" and "target element" or "reused element"?
Michael Priestley, Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM)
Lead IBM DITA Architect
[email protected]
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25
| From: | Scott Prentice <[email protected]> |
| To: | Robert D Anderson <[email protected]> |
| Cc: | dita <[email protected]> |
| Date: | 09/30/2009 12:55 PM |
| Subject: | Re: [dita] conref source and target [was: Why There are Constraints on Conref] |
I think that the key point of possible confusion is the term "source."
The "target" of an href/conref (I assume these concepts equally apply to
xrefs/links/topicrefs as well?) is clearly the element that is
referenced by that attribute, but calling the file or element that's
doing the referencing the "source" doesn't really make much sense to me.
This becomes particularly confusing to authors because the term "source"
in "single sourcing" typically refers to the content that is being
reused, which in this situation would be the "target."
It does seem that we might want to make an effort to standardize on some
terminology, and I for one would vote for not using the term "source"
for either end of this chain. As Jeff suggests, perhaps we should come
up with terms that can be used which are less ambiguous.
For the href/conref end, perhaps (just throwing out ideas, none seem all
that good though) ..
- referencing element
- container
- referencer (yuck)
- caller
And for the other end, perhaps ..
- referenced element
- target
.. hmm, there must be better terms.
...scott
Robert D Anderson wrote:
> In all of the material I've added to the spec, I've referred to the
> "target" as the item pointed to by the conref attribute. Like Eliot, I've
> thought of conref as an address, which points to a target. However, I've
> always recognized some confusion with source/target on their own, so when I
> talk about it, I usually try to call it "the target of the conref
> attribute" to try and be explicit.
>
> Not sure that helps any, but it means if we go the other way, I know all of
> the conref material I've put in the spec needs to be reversed.
>
> Robert D Anderson
> IBM Authoring Tools Development
> Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit
>
> "Ogden, Jeff" <[email protected]> wrote on 09/30/2009 08:22:01 AM:
>
>
>> "Ogden, Jeff" <[email protected]>
>> 09/30/2009 08:22 AM
>>
>> To
>>
>> <[email protected]>, "dita" <[email protected]>
>>
>> cc
>>
>> Subject
>>
>> RE: [dita] conref source and target [was: Why There are Constraints on
>>
> Conref]
>
>> While I agree that we need to be consistent, the terms "source" and
>> "target" used alone will always be ambiguous. I think we need to avoid
>> using them and come up with new terms or phrases to describe the two
>> locations. My problem, having said that, is that I'm not feeling
>> particularly creative and don't have any really good alternatives to
>> suggest.
>>
>> Some "not so good" possibilities:
>>
>> "conref location" (the location with the element that has the conref
>> attribute)
>> "conref content location" or "content location" (the location with
>> the content that is being reused)
>>
>> -Jeff
>>
>>
>>>
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