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Subject: related-links content model
Hello all, Several groups in IBM are working on specializations and have encountered the same problem with the related-links content model. Currently, the model is (link | linkpool | linklist)+ There must be at least one child. This is a problem when your specialization should have many optional links, but none can be required - something like this: <!ELEMENT favoriteAnimals (favoriteCat?, favoriteBird?, favoriteDog?, favoriteLlama?, otherAnimalLink*)> Technically, this is an invalid specialization of related-links, because none of the links are required - but the users do not want to require any given link from that group. The specialization thus has a looser model than the base, which requires at least one child. The only real way to get around this is to require a specialized linkpool, which can then contain all of the optional links. Are there any problems with changing the plus to an asterisk on the related-links content model? Doing so would greatly simplify the specialization of the related-links element. A similar argument can be made for changing the model of lists - Don pointed out to me that the "enote" demo specialization in the DITA Open Toolkit had this problem, and was forced to require one specialized list item inside the <noteheader> element. However, given that my users have not hit this one yet, and some implementations may rely on that required element for processing or editing, I'm more focused on the link issue. Any thoughts? Would anybody object to treating these as a bug fixes for 1.1, or as an additional very-simple feature for 1.1? If there are problems with changing the model of lists, then what about just updating the related-links model? Thanks, Robert D Anderson IBM Authoring Tools Development Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit
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