To meet laws and directives for safety information, it is required to place a note as first element in a step.
International guidelines require hazardstatements to appear directly before the command. The task topic does not support this requirement.
The current DITA 1.1 content models for step and substep do not support the placement of an element note (or the new domian hazardstatement) directly before an element cmd when more than one element step is present.
The elements "context" and "info" do allow "note" but "context" only supports notes / hazardstatements for all steps and "info" only supports a note / hazardstatement after a command.
International guidelines require hazardstatements to appear directly before the command.
The machine industry has to follow many regulations. One of those is that it must be ensured that risk of danger by handling on a machine must be reduced to a minimum. This includes notifications of any danger by proceeding with a cirtain step. Paper manuals are still widely used in the machinery industry. If an author uses the DITA 1.0 or 1.1 DTD and renders a paper document, there is a potential weekness in the DITA DTD as it enables the dangerous situation taht a command is rendered on one page but the warning about a hazardous situation is placed on the next page. This weekness can lead into a dangerous situation and in a liablility issue if an accident occurs.
Even when it is possbile to define in a stylesheet to place a hazard statement information always together with the cmd by useing the keep-with attribute, or by placing copying the content of a note in front of the rendered command, DITA should offer this placement directly from its DTD.
The order of elements should mainly be defined in the DTD not controlled a stylesheet.
The work to be done is simple and requires just a minor modification of the content model of the step element.
<!ELEMENT step ((%note;)?, %cmd;,
(%info; |%substeps; | %tutorialinfo; |
%stepxmp; | %choicetable; | %choices;)*,
(%stepresult;)? ) >
Minor
A procedual instruction can follow international regulations for hazard statements.