Re: [dita] clarifying the href attribute in the language reference

[Erik Hennum <ehennum@us.ibm.com>]

Hi, Eliot, Paul, and TC:

Should the rephrase bring out these main points:

* The value of a DITA href is a URI.

* A URI without a hash resolves to the top element in the file except where the top element is a <dita> element and the reference must resolve to a single topic, in which case the URI resolves to the first contained topic.

* A URI with a hash must have a valid DITA local identifier as the portion after the hash. A DITA local identifier consists of topicID/elementID for a subelement of a topic and of elementID for topics, maps, and map subelements.

As long as we're nailing down the description of href, are there any special considerations having to do with IRIs [1]? I wouldn't expect so, but I have a shallow understanding of IRIs and translation issues in general.


Hoping that's useful,


Erik Hennum
ehennum@us.ibm.com


[1]. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3987


"Eliot Kimber" <ekimber@innodata-isogen.com> wrote on 05/16/2007 12:24:12 PM:
>
> What is actually the case is that *non-topic element targets* use
> *non-standard* fragment identifier syntax (the overall syntax of the URI
> conforms to the URI spec since the URI spec itself does not specify the
> details of fragment identifiers).