Re: [dita] specialization question

Hi, Paul:

There are several issues in the approach sketched below for DITA 1.1:

A specialization has to change the element name.  There is a DITA 1.2 proposal for element aliasing to remove that limitation. 

A domain module cannot specialize from a topic type module.  There is a DITA 1.2 proposal for domain-topic unification to remove that limitation. 

All topic and topic domain elements are effectively global.  Consequently, designers can't create a new element name that's the same as an existing name without collision.

The collision underscores why DITA would benefit from aliases and namespaces so elements could be namespaced when needed to avoid collisions.  People have raised valid concersn about the scope of that effort, but naming collisions will be an increasing problem until DITA has aliasing and / or namespacing.

Erik Hennum



"Grosso, Paul" <>

"Grosso, Paul" <> 

04/30/2007 09:47 AM

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"DITA TC list" <>

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Subject

[dita] specialization question

One of our consultants has created a new domain specialization 

in which he specializes step.  He doesn't change the name.  

This works OK in the specialized topic DTD shell, but he runs 

into trouble when he tries to include this domain in the ditabase 

DTD shell.  The problem is that there are two different step 

elements, his from the domain and the regular one from task.  

If I were doing this, I'd probably use a new name for the

specialized element, but that isn't what this person wanted

to do.

Should it be possible to do what he wants to do?

paul