[oXygen-user] Automatically add @type when a topicref is added to a DITA map

Thu Aug 16 07:23:40 CDT 2012

Hi Radu

I agree that, if the topic type changes, you don't have to remember to
update @type on the topicref. However, I don't think that topic types
changes that often, also because it's kinda hard to change topic types
afterwards, because you also have to change the child elements, for example
conbody and refbody. In my experience, it's easier to create a new topic
and then just copy/paste the content into the <body> (or conbody, taskbody,
refbody) of that topic.

My use case:

I'm not using a CMS. I add topics to my ditamap in various ways. The
easiest one is to just create my topics first and then select the files in
Windows Explorer and drag them into my ditamap. I then have to remember to
add type="concept" because the DITA Open Toolkit also uses this information
for the "generated labels" for related topics (using reltable). For
example, if you have related tasks and you have specified type="task", the
generated label will read "Related tasks", which is good, because this
helps the reader to navigate to the correct type of topic. If you didn't
specify the @type attribute, the generated label will read "Related
information", which is too vague for me.

Maybe we can cross-post this conversation to the dita-users group and see
what other people think?

Kind regards

Yves

On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 2:02 PM, Oxygen XML Editor Support <
support at oxygenxml.com> wrote:

> Hello Yves,
>
> I consider that it's more flexible not to add the @type value when a
> topic ref is inserted.
> In this way, if the type of the referenced topic changes (it was a task
> and then you change it to be a concept) then you do not need to remember
> to also update the <topicref>.
> What is your usecase? Do you have a CMS which requires the @type to be
> added?
>
> The DITA 1.2 specs is very vague:
>
> > When a referencing element is first added to or updated in a document,
> DITA aware editors may, but are not required to, set the type attribute
> value based on the actual type of a referenced DITA topic.
>
> Regards,
> Radu
>
> Radu Coravu
> <oXygen/>  XML Editor, Schema Editor and XSLT Editor/Debugger
> http://www.oxygenxml.com
>
> On 8/16/2012 1:07 PM, Yves Barbion wrote:
> > Hi group
> >
> > When I add a topicref to a DITA map, I see that the @type attribute is
> > left unspecified. It would be nice if the @type attribute would then
> > automatically be filled in, depending on the information type of the
> > topic. For example, when I add a topicref to a task topic, the @type
> > attribute would automatically be type="task".
> >
> > Is this possible or is this a new feature request?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > --
> > Yves Barbion
> > www.scripto.nu <http://www.scripto.nu>
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > oXygen-user mailing list
> > oXygen-user at oxygenxml.com
> > http://www.oxygenxml.com/mailman/listinfo/oxygen-user
> >
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>

-- 
Yves Barbion
www.scripto.nu
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