Comment from:
Name: Mark Nazimova
Title: Information Architect
Organization: Information Builders
Regarding Specification: DITA / ditaval scope
I've already posted this in dita-users, but as someone pointed out, it might be appropriate to formally submit the request to the TC.
I don't see a way to set selection attribute actions (include, exclude, flag) within the scope of a topic or topic hierarchy; ditaval only seems to allow for setting them for an entire build. I know that this issue has been raised before (e.g., http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users/message/1713).
Can the Technical Committee consider adding support for applying condition actions in a more finely-grained way, perhaps using a map?
I need this for those of our manuals that set conditions to chapter-specific values. For example, in a server installation guide, each chapter describes how to install the server on a different platform. Some of the content is conditionalized to enable reuse in multiple chapters.
We reset the the condition values accordingly. For example, the PLATFORM condition:
* Is set to WINDOWS in Ch. 2
* Is set to UNIX in Ch. 3
The size and complexity of the conditional content varies; this is not a situation that lends itself to using variables. I don't think conrefs to build-specific files, or keyref, are solutions.
Thanks.
