dita — archive

DITA 2.0 Proposal: Add

From: Robert Anderson <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2017 14:43:00 -0000

I like this idea. It sort of seems obvious in retrospect, like "why didn't we think of this when doing bookmap", instead of treating book map as if it were a completely unique situation. I do wonder if this suggests a change within <topicmeta> as well. Currently, <topicmeta> allows <navtitle> and <searchtitle>, which are also what you find inside today's <titlealts>. The specialized metadata element <bookmeta> does not include <navtitle>, but allows <searchtitle>. I'm not sure if that was intentional (no need for extra navigation title at the a book map level), or oversight (<navtitle> was added to <topicmeta> in DITA 1.2, after <bookmeta> was established). To summarize - - The current <booktitle> model is bad, and <titlealts> already does something similar, so would be a better basis. - The <titlealts> element only allows a navigation title and a search title. I can easily buy a generic extension element for other alternate titles; this would have been perfect for bookmap. - Simply adding <titlealts> at the map level means all maps have this available - but it means at the map level you can now add navtitle + search title in two places - If we move those out of <topicmeta> then we have to figure out what to do in <topicref> going forward - Related: I think in LwDITA (?) there was a suggestion of just using <title> inside of <topicref> ... maybe topicref should be updated to allow title, then titlealts, then topicmeta (without the titles)? - I wonder if these questions are why we went with the current <booktitle> design And to think, I almost hit "send" after just writing out "I like this idea". Regards, Robert D. Anderson DITA-OT lead and Co-editor DITA 1.3 specification , Digital Services Group E-mail: [email protected] Digital Services Group 11501 BURNET RD,, TX, 78758-3400, AUSTIN, USA Chris Nitchie ---03/30/2017 08:53:35 AM---We should allow <titlealts> inside <map> as well as <topic>. We should also add a zero-or-more <titl From: Chris Nitchie <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Date: 03/30/2017 08:53 AM Subject: [dita] DITA 2.0 Proposal: Add <titlealts> to <map> Sent by: <[email protected]> We should allow <titlealts> inside <map> as well as <topic>. We should also add a zero-or-more <titlealt> element that can be specialized for specific purposes, and consider making <navtitle> and <searchtitle> specializations of <titlealt>. In developing applications that leverage DITA, you very frequently need to ask the question, “what’s this document’s title?” It should be as simple as looking for the <title> element, or its specialization, at the top level of the file. However, this doesn’t work for bookmap, because its title element - <booktitle> - is actually a collection of pseudo-title elements specialized from <ph> - <mainbooktitle> and <booktitlealt>. So you have to write special-case code to handle BookMap, which is irksome. Even then, it won’t work for other <map> types that use a similar trick (like D4P PubMap). Adding <titlealts> to <map> solves it for new map types, like whatever we’re doing for BookMap 2.0. Chris