Legend: in this e-mail, the term «Content List(s)» is used as a
collective term for the ToC plus the Lists of
examples/figures/tables/etc.
RFEs: Based on the reasoning that follows underneath, here are 5 RFEs
for ditac:
* RFE 1: In the HTML multipage version, the ditac ought to place the ToC
on its own, dedicated page. And not, like today, place it together with
the metadata section. At least this ought to be an option. (Perhaps it
already is?)
* RFE 2: Regardless of RFE 1: ditac should treat each content list as a
topic.
* RFE 3: Regardless of RFE 1 + RFE 2: ditac should create navigation
links in order to be able to jump to and from each content lists (the
simplest thing would/should/could be to simply extend the current topic
links to also cover the content lists).
* RFE 4: Regardless of RFE 1 + RFE 2 + RFE 3: The various content lists
- or at least the ToC itself - should occur in the Table of Contents.
(May be there already is a way to achive this?)
* RFE 5: As a consequence, it would also have to become possible to
navigate to and from the title section to the ToC section. This could be
done by adding navigational links to the ToC heading.
Reasoning:
When navigating the HTML-version of a DITA-tekst, such as for instance
the one page version of «[DITA for the
impatient](http://www.xmlmind.com/tutorials/DITA/index.html)», it has
several times occurred to me that the Table of Contents should - or
could very well - have been included in the navigational links. And,
upon inspection, I realised that the same goes for the various Lists of
examples/figures/tables/etc.
* Example: While are reading a section in the middle of the one page
version of ”Dita for the impatient” you decide to use the navigation
links (located to the right of each heading) and click yourself
“upwards”, in order to inspect the ToC. But then you will currently
experience that the navigation links only takes you to the
«[Introduction](http://www.xmlmind.com/tutorials/DITA/index.html#introduction)»
section. There simply are no navigation links that leads any further up.
The issue is related to both one page and multipage output and (I
believe) to both map-based output and bookmap-based output. However, for
the multipage versions, the situation is not quite as bad: Because each
«List of tables/examples/figures» gets its own dedicated page, one may
use the «Previous page» link to reach them. However, even in that
case, when you arrive at the first «List of tables/examples/figures»
and click on the «Previous page» link, you are taken to the very first
page which displays the metadata section of the document including the
title as well as the ToC section, which occurs below the metadata
section. If the metadata is very short, then, I guess, less of a problem
- but if there is as tall image and/or much other content in the
metadata section ... then you must "mouse around" in order to locate the
ToC.
In one way, this issue leads to the conceptual question of whether the
content lists are “topics“ or something else. It is not my intent to
launch a conceptual debate ... However, if the building blocks of a DITA
text are “topics”, there I guess each “content list“ of text
have to be considered as topics: Each of them has a title and a body ...
so ...
Leif Halvard Silli
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