HI All,
I concur with Michael’s statement. It don’t want to rely upon the authors (inhouse, vendors, around the world) remembering what is not allowed. The constraints are designed to keep the authoring consistent across a wide variety of knowledge and experience. So I would not use any “general” model where I wanted constraints. Of course, I might want a different set of constraints that is currently available in the current constrained task.
I think the arch spec needs to make this relationship very, very clear to everyone. The backwards compatibility is a huge problem if people start using “general” task without knowing its consequences. It’s presence under the name “task” in an editor makes the possibility of serious problems enormous for organizations.
I intend to discuss it in the technical content sections of the arch spec once the 2nd review is complete. I hope its a major discussion under the constraint mechanism. This needs to come with huge warnings.
JoAnn
On 9/23/09 9:28 AM, "Michael Priestley" <> wrote:
Hi Rob,
While it is true that the conrefs would work if an organization switched wholesale from the current constrained task to a looser model, that's not backwards compatibility - that's saying that if someone wants to preserve their current reuse strategy they should throw out their content guidelines.
Michael Priestley, Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM)
Lead IBM DITA Architect
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25 <http://dita.xml.org/blog/25>
From: "Rob Hanna" <>
To: "'ekimber'" <>, "'Kristen James Eberlein'" <>, "'JoAnn Hackos'" <>
Cc: "'dita'" <>
Date: 09/23/2009 10:57 AM
Subject: RE: [dita] DITAbase for conversion
I understand the compatibility problems between constrained and
unconstrained conrefs. It shouldn't present a problem in environments where
DITA 1.1 DTDs are upgraded to DITA 1.2 DTDs with the unconstrained task
model. It is not a backward compatibility issue. Technically, the older DITA
1.1 task topics will also be unconstrained but be written to resemble the
constrained task model.
Cheers,
Rob
