Scenario for cross-deliverable referencing

This was my todo from last week's mtg
- sorry I'm leaving it to the wire.

This describes a solution that can be
implemented today - I still think there more work to be done, including:

-  a general solution for key scoping
(but not deliverable-based scoping since the boundaries of deliverables
are mutable, as I'm trying to show here).

- a standardized approach for cross-deliverable
referencing - if we want to encourage this approach, for example, or propose
an alternative - but we should be providing some guidance to vendors on
how to implement so that the solution is cross-vendor compatible

scenario:

- we need to produce PDFs for each chapter
of a book, as well as a single big PDF that contains all chapters

- the chapters contain cross-references
to content in other chapters, which needs to be resolved as a cross-deliverable
link in the single-chapter PDFs but as a local link in the single big PDF
case

- each chapter is represented by a separate
map

- each topicref in the map has a uniquely
addressable key (using whatever general scoping mechanism we choose to
implement) 

- the book as a whole is represented
by a master map that pulls in the others

solution for individual chapter case:

- for each chapter, execute a partial
PDF build, which does not transform the content but does preprocess the
map to turn each topicref href into a form appropriate for the deliverable
being produced (ie, including the filename of the PDF being produced, with
appropriate anchor syntax)

        this
results in a deliverable-specific set of key mappings

- for each chapter, create a master
map that includes the chapter being built and then resource-only inclusions
of the deliverable-specific maps for all other chapters

- for each chapter's master map, execute
a full PDF build

        this
results in a chapter-level PDF with all links to other chapter resolved
correctly

solution for whole book case:

- build normally

Michael Priestley, Senior Technical
Staff Member (STSM)

Lead IBM DITA Architect 



http://dita.xml.org/blog/25