RE: Glossary issues for discussion

[Kristen James Eberlein <kris@eberleinconsulting.com>]

I want to respond quickly to the question you raise in #2: Does a glossentry topic cover only one concept/sense of a term?

 

I think this question bring up the conflict between the glossary entry specialization AS DEFINED and as how some implementations might want to use it.

 

The specialization was defined by Kara Warburton, the IBM terminologist at the time, and was intended to serve formal purposes. The original design was that a glossary entry would define a single concept/sense of a term.

 

There are OASIS whitepapers about the glossary specialization, one by Kara Warburton and another by Tony Self. I’ll try to get links out to the list. The white paper by Kara certainly lays out some of the core principles behind the specialization.

 

Kris

 

From: dita@lists.oasis-open.org <dita@lists.oasis-open.org> On Behalf Of Dawn Stevens
Sent: Wednesday, November 1, 2023 12:43 PM
To: dita <dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: [dita] Glossary issues for discussion

 

Hi all,

I am preparing the glossary section of the technical content specification for review. After meeting with Kris, we decided that some important questions should be discussed before sending it out for review. Here are the questions that we will discuss in our next meeting:

 

1 – What are we defining? The term that appears in glossTerm is what?

• Is it just a term of any status?
• Is it a primary term?
• Is it a preferred term?

      Terminology is inconsistent throughout, but seems to imply the word is either primary or preferred. Is there a distinction between these two adjectives? And do we agree that glossterms should only be primary/preferred. What about using DITA to create a glossary for translators who need to know these other terms perhaps that are not primary or preferred? Consider glossAlternateFor which is an xref to another term – there is an implication that one term is preferred over the other. The way the description is written the alternate would be less desireable than the “preferred” term in the glossterm. Furhter, the glossStatus element allows me to set a value or something like prohibited – why would I do that is the glossterm was always the preferred term? If not specified, glossStatus staets that the glossterm is preferred and an alternate would be an allowed term.

 

2 – Are we agreed that one glossentry topic includes only one definition – one single sense of the term. Is that too prescriptive? Couldn’t a company choose to create a dictionary that would include perhaps numbered definitions?

 

3 – glossPartOfSpeech is defined by the @value attribute. However, if used, it is presumably translatable content. Should this element be modified to contain text instead? If we keep it as an attribute – why is noun the default? Does there need to be a default? glossProperty has a similar problem, but is open-ended so we don’t know how these properties might be used and whether they would be translatable.

 

4 –. What is the distinction between glossUsage and glossScopeNote?

 

5 – why would you put an image in glossSymbol rather than just embedding it in the glossdef?

 

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

 

Dawn