RE: [dita-comment] Description of Multimedia

I see. So we’re both right (to a degree). I never said anything about ease of use but I can see why you might want to specialize <foreign>, though I might consider using some other element to take advantage of default processing because I believe that <foreign> has no recommended rendering specification so that most processors would just plop (I hope) the vocabulary and content to the output stream. I could, for instance, display the contents of <foreign> differently than that (orange background or something just as silly) to set off the vocabulary from stuff in the XML mention domain.

 

I appreciate the clarification.

 

Julio J. Vazquez | Senior Content Analyst

Vasont Systems 

t +1 717-793-3895 

Skype: tpt_jvazquez

 

From: Robert D Anderson [mailto:]  
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2015 2:31 PM
To: Julio Vazquez
Cc: 
Subject: RE: [dita-comment] Description of Multimedia

 

Hi Julio,

The <foreign> element is not supposed to eliminate the need for specialization. It's true that the foreign element does not have to be specialized - you could add a foreign vocabulary to your doctype shell, and use that markup directly within <foreign>. That said, in most cases, avoiding specialization will result in a poor authoring experience. 

The content model for <foreign> allows every element in your document type shell (the content model is ANY). So without adding any foreign vocabularies, it already allows every DITA element. If you add MathML to your shell, you'll see every DITA element plus almost 200 MathML elements. Add in SVG, and <foreign> now allows 80 additional elements from that vocabulary.

With DITA 1.3, <mathml> is a DITA specialization of <foreign>. The content model is restricted to the root MathML element <m:math> (along with a couple of other alternatives). The <svg-container> element does the same, ensuring inline SVG begins with <svg:svg>. These domains are integrated by default into several of the shells delivered with DITA 1.3. 

In short (if it's not too late for that) - the idea behind <foreign> is simply to provide a way to insert non-DITA markup, in a manner that processors can recognize it as such and respond accordingly. While not required, this should generally be done in a specialized domain if you want the foreign markup to be easy to use.

Robert D Anderson
IBM Authoring Tools Development
Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit (http://www.dita-ot.org/)

"Julio Vazquez" ---09/23/2015 12:58:02---While your recommendation makes sense, I'm not sure that I understand the logic. I thought that the

From: "Julio Vazquez" <>
To: Robert D Anderson/Rochester/IBM@IBMUS
Cc: <>
Date: 09/23/2015 12:58
Subject: RE: [dita-comment] Description of Multimedia

While your recommendation makes sense, I’m not sure that I understand the logic. I thought that the idea behind <foreign> is to allow non-DITA vocabulary that, while not recognized by the DITA specification, to get passed to the output stream to be handled by the output processor eliminating the need for specialization for a small volume of snippets of XML content. 

Am I misunderstanding the purpose? 

Julio J. Vazquez | Senior Content Analyst
Vasont Systems 
t +1 717-793-3895 
Skype: tpt_jvazquez

From: Robert D Anderson [mailto:] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2015 1:50 PM
To: Julio Vazquez
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [dita-comment] Description of Multimedia

Hi Julio,

Thanks for the comment. In this case, I think it's better to leave the examples as is. The text in question is:
"The <foreign> element enables authors to include media within topic content, for example, SVG graphics, MathML equations, and so on."

The <foreign> element is what enables those domains to include SVG and MathML with DITA 1.3. I think it's better for this section to give an example of <foreign> that is needed, already exists, and can be used by anybody with 1.3, rather than picking some other vocabulary that could only be used after creating a new specialization.

Robert D Anderson
IBM Authoring Tools Development
Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit (http://www.dita-ot.org/)

"Julio Vazquez" ---09/23/2015 11:30:12---In section 2.2.1.7, the description of multimedia uses SVG and MathML as examples of media which the

From: "Julio Vazquez" <>
To: <>
Date: 09/23/2015 11:30
Subject: [dita-comment] Description of Multimedia

In section 2.2.1.7, the description of multimedia uses SVG and MathML as examples of media which the <foreign> element includes. As DITA 1.3 includes these domains, it would be better to find other examples for this subsection.
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Julio J. Vazquez
Senior Content Analyst
Vasont Systems
A TransPerfect Company
Skype: tpt_jvazquez

www.vasont.com
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