RE: [dita] question on @locktitle for topichead and topicgroup elements

Based on a very short discussion at today's TC call -

I think that locktitle does not serve any purpose on these elements. As
Bruce said, it was pulled in with the topicref-atts attribute. I believe
(digging back into history) some people considered locktitle to be a
cascading attribute, which is probably why it was not removed. However, the
TC has made clear in the past that this attribute should *not* inherit.
With that clear - locktitle is more or less meaningless.

Most of the other attributes do serve a purpose. Bruce listed all of these:
collection-type, processing-role, type, scope, locktitle, format,
linking, toc, print, search, and chunk.

Most of these attributes can cascade to children, and I have often seen
them used on topicgroup in order to treat the children as a group. For the
remaining items:
@chunk has a specific definition for topichead (that is, for any topicref
that just uses a title), in that it indicates a title-only topic must be
generated, possibly including children. [1]
@collection-type generally has an effect on the children, and the same is
true here - it may result in next/previous or family relationships among
those children.
@locktitle was discussed above

[1] (under the definition of "to-content")
http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.2/os/spec/archSpec/chunking.html

Robert D Anderson
IBM Authoring Tools Development
Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit

Tarun Garg <> wrote on 04/03/2011 11:59:35 PM:

> From: Tarun Garg <>
> To: Su-Laine Yeo <>
> Cc: dita <>
> Date: 04/04/2011 12:03 AM
> Subject: RE: [dita] question on @locktitle for topichead and
> topicgroup elements
>
> Hi Su-Laine,
>
> Nice Catch!
> In fact, that makes me think the purpose of other attributes for
> these elements.  Many attributes like @scope, @type, etc. do not
> have any direct use for these elements. I think they just serve the
> purpose of specifying the value at a higher level; so that it can
> get derived/used in all the descendents where not specified explicitly.
>
> Regards,
> Tarun Garg | Adobe Systems | +91-120-2444711 | 
>
>
> From: Su-Laine Yeo [mailto:]
> Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2011 2:34 AM
> To: dita
> Subject: RE: [dita] question on @locktitle for topichead and
> topicgroup elements
>
> Thanks Bruce. I've added an item requesting doc clarification to
> http://wiki.oasis-open.org/dita/DITA_1.3_Proposals
>
> Bruce's point implies that @locktitle is there only because it's
> part of a group of attributes, i.e. it is there for the convenience
> of the DTD developer, but has no defined purpose. If that is case,
> then the spec should say explicitly that attribute x on element y
> has no defined purpose. Otherwise, we're making the user think about
> what possible uses an attribute could have, and then reaching the
> correct conclusion that there is no purpose via the process of
> growing weary of thinking about it.
>
> Su-Laine
>
> From: Bruce Nevin (bnevin) [mailto:]
> Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 6:31 PM
> To: dita
> Subject: RE: [dita] question on @locktitle for topichead and
> topicgroup elements
>
> Is there anything in the topicref-atts group that is needed there?
> Presumably inclusion of the topicref-atts group is the reason we see
> topicref-atts in these elements. Or is there some function of
> @locktitle other than overriding the title found in referenced content?
>
> For reference, the topicref-atts attribute group includes
> collection-type, processing-role, type, scope, locktitle, format,
> linking, toc, print, search, and chunk.
>
>
> From: Su-Laine Yeo [mailto:]
> Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 8:55 PM
> To: dita
> Subject: [dita] question on @locktitle for topichead and topicgroup
elements
> Hi everyone,
> This is more out of curiosity than anything: In <topichead> and
> <topicgroup> elements, does the @locktitle attribute do anything?
> If yes, what does it do?
> Su-Laine
> Su-Laine Yeo
> Solutions Consultant
> JustSystems Canada, Inc.
> Office: 1 (778) 327-6356
> 
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