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Subject: RE: [dita] DITA Task model [and PTC's Arbortext Editor]
Joann
wrote in part: The Arbortext decision to call general task
“task” has revealed this problem, which was actually quite
fortuitous. Considering their decision, was anyone from PTC aware of the
problems that were going to occur if adopters begin using more than one task
model. The situation in Arbortext Editor 5.4 is untenable, at least for all of
my community. As I understand it, if authors use task quite innocently in 5.4
Out of the Box, they will invalidate all their conrefs already developed in
DITA 1.1. That’s a truly critical problem. We
(PTC) understood some, but not all of the implications of moving to two task
models (strict and general). For example I missed the conref limitation. Using
the name “Task” for “General Task” was a mistake, which
we (PTC) need to correct. Including
“General Task” rather than strict “Task” in ditabase
was a mistake that the DITA TC seems poised to correct and which I expect we (PTC)
will install once the DITA TC’s decision is finalized. How
many ditabases to include in DITA 1.2 is still an open question and I’m
not sure that the TC is zeroing in on an answer. My own vote is to
include just one and that should include the strict version of task. There
are questions about the exact timing of any changes to be made at PTC that
remain to be worked out. It would be helpful if the TC could settle on its
solution to this issue since it is hard to make plans for the future when the
ground rules might still change. If
someone works with tasks entirely within Arbortext Editor, they won’t run
into any problems with Tasks or General Tasks. But if someone exchanges
Tasks with others that aren’t using Arbortext Editor, that might
result in an invalid document at the non-Arbortext site. If there is a problem,
it can be worked around fairly easily, but at the cost of having to use the
less strict rules which may not be something that someone wants to do or
editing your tasks so they follow the strict rules which may also be something
that folks don’t want to do. It is this potential problem that is
driving me to think that we (PTC) need to make changes sooner rather than
later. A
larger question that all of this raises for me is if the decision to include
the preliminary versions of the DITA 1.2 DTDs and XSDs in the Arbortext 5.4
release before DITA 1.2 was more formally approved was a mistake.
I’ve got very mixed feelings about that at this point. Of course we
expected DITA 1.2 to be an approved OASIS Standard by now. And a decision
to not include DITA 1.2 when we did might have resulted in a delay of from 18
to 24 months, which at the time didn’t seem acceptable. And the
drive to include DITA 1.2 when we did, did have some advantages since it
uncovered and allowed a number of problems with the DTDs and XSDs to be fixed
earlier than would otherwise have been the case. We just didn’t
find or understand everything. But you almost never do.
-Jeff From: Joann Hackos
[mailto:joann.hackos@comtech-serv.com] When
was it decided that the original task model in DITA 1.1 would be rewritten as a
constraint of the general task model? I don’t recall hearing any
discussion of the impacts of such a rewrite. Instead of being a specialization
of topic, task is now a constraint of general task. Why was this decision made
and did anyone consider the implications of the change from a specialization to
a constraint? |
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