Hi Hussein,
You are right that the spec does not make clear what happens with a topicref
with scope=external.
I was thinking that a reltable could be used to 'inject' a Related
Information link into a DITA topic, but the spec doesn't make clear whether
this is the intended use.
The scenario I have is this: I have DITA topics that are training sessions,
with inline code fragments. But I'd also like Related Links to actual code
files - e.g. a Java class. Rather than local copies in the DITA source tree,
these will be the real code files somewhere in my Java source tree. I don't
want to have the Related Links hrefs in the DITA topics being absolute paths
into the Java source, since this is a maintenance headache. So I was
thinking of using a relatable to link topics and code files. However, I take
your point that the maps are about topics, not other resources.
I have a solution where the Topics link to local HTML files (within the DITA
output location) - e.g. Resource/MyClass_java.html. These files redirect
(Meta Refresh) to the real resources - e.g. ........./MyClass.java. This at
least means that the absolute paths can be changed without needing to edit
the Topics or re-build the output.
regards
/Roy MacLean
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Roy MacLean -- IT Training & Technical Writing
http://roymaclean-it.co.uk
contact at roymaclean-it.co.uk
07 956 474 911
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-----Original Message-----
From: Hussein Shafie [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 13 October 2009 18:27
To: Roy MacLean
Cc: ditac-support at xmlmind.com
Subject: Re: [ditac] Ditac and external topicrefs
Roy MacLean wrote:
> I've been looking into Ditac for about a month, and I think it's very
good.
> However, I've run into what seems to be a limitation.
>
> As far as I can tell from experimenting, and from looking at the source
> code, there is no processing of topicrefs with scope="external", either
> within a map body or within a reltable. (In the code, there's a test
> isLocalTopicRef that seems to exclude these). Is this correct,
There is no bug here. Ditac works as expected.
> and if so, why?
The DITA spec does not seem to specify how to process topicrefs with
scope="external"; and we didn't find anything *useful* (that is, using
common sense) to do with such elements.
> This is a pity, since one commonly wants to link to non-DITA resources, at
> the map level, rather than having xrefs embedded in topic documents. I get
> the impression that the Open Toolkit does support this feature.
>
We don't use the DITA OT as a reference. We only use the DITA 1.1 spec.
Please point us to the section of the DITA 1.1 spec explaining how to
process topicrefs with scope="external",
If there is no such section, please explain which kind of processing you
expect. We vaguely see what to do with topicrefs with scope="external"
in the reltable and we really don't see what to do with topicrefs with
scope="external" in the topicref hierarchy.
