Hmm, I forgot what I recorded myself as the TC decision
this Tuesday: we said that an indexterm within the prolog points to the first
page of the topic, and no one on the TC objected.
So unless someone comes back with serious pushback from
some user community, that's the decision (and I'm okay with that). Sorry to
cause confusion (so many committees and telcons that I forget sometimes how far
we got on a certain topic).
We do still have (I believe) some outstanding issues
about indexes--questions 4-7 in my email at
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/email/archives/200607/msg00034.html
paul
From: Grosso, Paul [mailto:]
Sent: Friday, 2006 July 21 09:38
To:
Subject: RE: [dita] indexing
question
Actually, the point specified by an indexterm in the
prolog never gets associated with any page since the prolog never gets put
into the output (under the usual styling of "prolog"), so per the standard
indexterm processing, an indexterm within a prolog would simply be ignored
(i.e., never generate an index entry).
So I misstated when I said such might create an index
entry pointing to the second page of the topic.
But I was correct that an indexterm in a prolog is
useless (under the standard indexterm processing), so we should certainly
suggest people don't do this.
Bruce is suggesting something akin to what Erik (I
believe) implied a while ago: that an indexterm within a prolog have "special
semantics" and "act as if" there is an indexterm on the first page of the
topic.
We could do this. And perhaps this would address the
user requirement to be able to have an index entry that points to the first
page of a topic and therefore imply we don't need to allow indexterm within
title and shortdesc and such. I'm just not sure if having to insert a prolog
containing a keyword containing an indexterm--as opposed to just putting an
indexterm in the title--will be acceptable to users.
Users on (and represented by members of) the
TC--what do you say?
paul
From: Esrig, Bruce (Bruce)
[mailto:]
Sent: Friday, 2006 July 21
09:08
To: Grosso, Paul;
Subject: RE: [dita] indexing
question
Paul,
The "point" specified by an indexterm in the prolog
isn't necessarily after the title or shortdesc.
We
can interpret that when the source markup contains an indexterm in
the prolog, the indexterm is understood to be tied to a point at the
beginning of the title.
That's just to preserve the primary method, in
which an indexterm that applies to the entire topic is entered in the
prolog.
Best wishes,
Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: Grosso, Paul
[mailto:]
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 9:33
AM
To:
Subject: RE: [dita]
indexing question
We could resolve the issue this way.
The problem with this solution is the case where you
have a long shortdesc (which precedes the prolog) so that the point-wise,
subflow indexterm in the prolog ends up on the second page of the topic so
your index entry does not have the page number of the first page in the
topic. So, in fact, an indexterm in a prolog really has no useful purpose,
since you cannot guarantee that its effect is going to be the desired
one.
So I could live with this solution provided that we
allow indexterm in other places that it is currently not allowed (e.g.,
title) so that a user can ensure they get an index entry pointing to the
first page of a topic.
And once we do that, we would then issue a "best
practices" statement saying not to put indexterm within
prolog.
paul
From: Chris Wong
[mailto:]
Sent: Friday, 2006 July 21
07:49
To: Erik Hennum; Rodolfo M. Raya
Cc: David
Walters; ; Esrig, Bruce (Bruce); JoAnn Hackos;
Grosso, Paul
Subject: RE: FW: FW: [dita] indexing
question
From what I understand, the issue of
treating indexterm differently in topic prolog vs content was due to the
misunderstanding that the content of indexterm in content actually
appears as part of that content. Since we have now clarified
that indexterm's content is always a subflow, we can treat indexterm
uniformly in both topic prolog and content. Is my understanding correct
that this issue is now
resolved?
Chris
From: Erik Hennum
[mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 6:16
PM
To: Rodolfo M. Raya
Cc: Chris Wong; David
Walters; ; Esrig, Bruce (Bruce); JoAnn Hackos;
Grosso, Paul
Subject: RE: FW: FW: [dita] indexing
question
Hi, Rudolfo, Dave, and other index enthusiasts:
A lightbulb
went off for me. I think we're conflating two cases here.
In the
case of <keyword>, the element is an inline within content and a
subflow in the prolog as Rudolfo has stated.
In both cases,
<keyword> identifies a word from a vocabulary. In the inline case,
the vocabulary word is delimited within the flow. In the prolog case,
the vocabulary word is identified as potential metadata for search
engines.
In neither case do we have a base processing expectation
of producing published indexes for the <keyword> element. We have
sometimes speculated about the possibility of generating indexes from
inline mentions (in Eliot's term) of vocabulary words, but I believe
we've always deferred that.
By constract, <indexterm> is a
subflow in all cases as Chris has stated. The contents of
<indexterm> must be translated, but the translation of the content
in which <indexterm> is embedded isn't affected in any way by the
positioning of <indexterm>. That is, <indexterm> does not
delimit part of the flow.
In the prolog, <indexterm> is
specified as serving two purposes: feeding index terms to search engines
as part of the metadata and indexing the topic.
Digression: The
case could be made to treat <term> in exactly the same way as
<keyword>, using <keyword> for words from formal languages
and <term> for words from cultural or social vocabularies. That
would require adding <term> to the prolog.
Hoping that
clarifies,
Erik Hennum
'
src="gif00175.gif" width=16 border=0>"Rodolfo M. Raya"
<>
"Rodolfo M. Raya"
<>
07/18/2006 02:15
PM
To
David Walters/Rochester/IBM@IBMUS
cc
"Esrig, Bruce (Bruce)" <>,
Chris Wong <>,
, Erik Hennum/Oakland/IBM@IBMUS,
JoAnn Hackos <>, "Grosso,
Paul" <>
Subject
RE: FW: FW: [dita] indexing
question
On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 15:03 -0500, David Walters
wrote:
Hi,
New example:
The <p> text
is complete.
<topic>
<prolog>
<indexterm>term one</indexterm>
<indexterm>term
two</indexterm>
</prolog>
<body>
<p>Paragraph that contains term one
<indexterm>term one</indexterm>
and term two
<indexterm>term two</indexterm> inside.</p>
</body>
</topic>
If the content of
<indexterm> is
completely ignored when the topic is published as XHTML, PDF or any
other format, then this element should be completely ignored at
translation time.
The content of <indexterm> doesn't need to be
translated if it is only a location marker. The whole element can be
replaced with a tag by the the translation tool.
Best
regards,
Rodolfo
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