Hello Michael,
I am very enthusiastic about this proposal. I believe it
incorporates all the issues we have been grappling with. Thank you for putting
this together.
JoAnn
JoAnn T. Hackos, PhD
President
Comtech Services,
Inc.
710 Kipling
Street, Suite 400
Denver CO 80215
303-232-7586
From: Michael Priestley
[mailto:]
Sent: Monday, August 21, 2006 4:22
PM
To: Dana Spradley
Cc:
Subject: Re: [dita] Are indexterm ranges
backwards incompatible?
After some discussion with Bruce
Esrig, we've got a compromise proposal documented here:
http://wiki.oasis-open.org/dita/Indexing_issue_summary?action=show
This compromise is designed, among other
things, to leave the range/not range decision up to the author, by allowing
ranges to be specified on a per-topic basis as well as a per-branch basis using
the index range attributes.
See the
heading "Proposal for indexing ranges", text copied here for ease of
discussion:
------------------
Index
entries are interpreted as point references. The index contains a reference to
the point where the index entry is declared. If an index entry occurs in a topic
prolog, the reference is to the start of the title of the topic.
Index ranges are structural. Most
index range declarations refer to an entire topic or set of topics. The only
exception is a range contained entirely within the body of a topic.
Index range indications may occur in
the topicmeta of a topicref at the map level. Similarly, they may occur in the
prolog of a topic. These two locations are architecturally equivalent, so either
indication may appear in either place, and a match will still be recognized.
An index range start indication in
the meta information for a topic is interpreted to indicate the start of the
topic title. An index range end indication in the meta information for a topic
is interpreted to indicate the end of the topic. This includes all subtrees of
nested topics, including subtrees of the start and end topics and any
intervening subtrees. The subtree of nested topics is included even when the
range starts and ends in the meta information for the same topic.
An index range may start in the body
of a topic. Such an index range ends at a matching index range end indication
within the same body, or at the end of the body, whichever comes first. Such an
index range does not span sub-topics of the topic.
-------------------------
Michael Priestley
IBM DITA Architect and
Classification Schema PDT
Lead
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25
Dana Spradley
<>
08/21/2006 06:01 PM
To
cc
Subject
Re: [dita] Are indexterm ranges
backwards incompatible?
Coming back to this issue today, I agree that a compromise is
appropriate, given its relative triviality.
The only addition I'd make to
Paul's previously suggested implementation statement would be to put indesterm
start/end rendering in the hands of end users as well (my addition
bolded):
"Index terms in prologs are neither ranges nor
points. They are associated with the whole topic. DITA publishing
implementations are encouraged to let the end-user choose whether to represent
them as page ranges spanning an entire topic or individual pages in an index.
Publishing implementations are also encouraged to let end
users decide whether to render indexterm start/end pairs as page ranges, or as
point references to the start indexterm. Another choice
that publishing implementations may wish to provide is whether to collapse
multiple continguous page references into a single page range."
--Dana
Paul Prescod wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: Grosso, Paul
[mailto:]
Sent:
Wednesday, August 16, 2006 7:01 AM
To:
Subject: RE: [dita] Are indexterm ranges backwards
incompatible?
...
Importance and ranges are orthogonal
concepts.
I think that
underlying this debate is a difference in styles by index
users. When I'm
presented with many mentions of a particular topic,
there are three things
that I look at:
1. is any bolded as being the "defining" instance of an
index entry?
(hard to do in topic-oriented content!)
2. which comes
first (also not necessarily informative in
topic-oriented content)
3.
which is longest: likely to be a tutorial and not just a
random
mention
So I understand Dana's point, but I don't (personally)
think it is
crucial enough for substantial spec rewriting at this point. It
is
totally true that if you have a Concept called "Cheese" then you
would
want that topic to look special in the index entry for cheese. It
is
also true that barring any special markup, making that mention into
the
longest range is ONE way to make it stand out. Maybe we should agree
for
DITA 1.2 to document other (more explicit) ways to make it stand
out.
To put it another way: if a publishing tool provides the options
I've
proposed then I would tend to advocate that they be set Dana's
way
rather than the way others propose.
That said, I think it is
acceptable to leave control of the issue in the
hands of the end-user rather
than requiring it to be hard coded in the
spec. I thought that we were
heading towards a compromise on those
terms.
Paul
Prescod
