dita — archive

[Gershon Joseph]

At Cisco we have implemented complex profiling in our DITAVAL by relying on the following: 1. Set a default global behavior (in our case, "exclude" all profiled content) 2. Set a default on one specific attribute to override the global default to make it "include" by default. 3. Set explicit values for each and every attribute-value pair selected by the user at publishing time to include (for all but one of our profiling attributes) or exclude (for one specific attribute). I read the DITA 1.1 DITAVAL spec once when I implemented this logic, and didn't find it at all confusing or lacking. However, some of our developers read it and remained confused and uninformed, and I had to explain to them how to take our publishing UI and generate the correct DITAVAL file. There is definitely room for improvement, but nothing that I feel requires addressing in the current release. If the TC does however feel we should clarify the DITAVAL processing topics, I think we should more explicitly call out the ability to set a default for the entire DITAVAL file, as well as for a specific attribute, and also point out the 3 levels of default/override I mention above. -- Gershon