dita — archive

[Kristen Eberlein]

There has been a “hack” associated with properties table since early DITA days, to account for the fact that simple tables did not allow spanning. This hack lead to statements like the following: “When a single property type takes multiple values, authors can create additional property elements and use only the <propvalue> and <propdesc> elements for each successive value.” The hack has never been supported well in editors (or processors), and now that simple tables permit spanning, it seems like a good time to get rid of it. This would involve the following: Minor changes to the spec Additional content for the “Migrating to DITA 2.0” committee note The advantages to getting rid of the “hack” are the following: Better support in editors (no need to implement varying support for <properties> and <simpletable> Consistency in spec (no need to document exceptions) Simpler stylesheet work (no need to implement varying support for <properties> and <simpletable> Clean up of technical debt Best, Kris Kristen James Eberlein Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee Owner, Eberlein Consulting LLC kris@eberleinconsulting.com Skype: kriseberlein; voice: +1 (919) 622-1501