Re: [dita] DITA 2.0: suggest removing @xtrf, @xtrc

I agree with Robert and Chris: remove them.

Cheers,

E.

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Eliot Kimber, Owner

Contrext, LLC

http://contrext.com

From:  dita <> on behalf of Chris Nitchie <>
Date:  Tuesday, June 14, 2016 at 1:25 PM
To:  Robert Anderson <>, dita <>
Subject:  Re: [dita] DITA 2.0: suggest removing @xtrf, @xtrc

I agree. Unlike copy-to, I have used these in my implementations, both for debugging and for traceability from output HTML elements to source XML elements. But they’re not to be used by
 authors, and so probably shouldn’t be there (but as Robert says, they can still be added by processors for whatever purposes).

 

Chris 

 

From: <> on behalf of Robert D Anderson <>
Date: Tuesday, June 14, 2016 at 2:19 PM
To: DITA TC <>
Subject: [dita] DITA 2.0: suggest removing @xtrf, @xtrc

 

For DITA 2.0, I'd like to suggest removing @xtrf and @xtrc, also known as the "debug attribute group":
http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/dita/v1.3/os/part1-base/langRef/attributes/debugAttributes.html#global-atts

Sort of like with last week's discussion of copy-to, these attributes were really defined based on a specific processing model (the step-by-step toolkit style processing), with the idea that debug information can be carried through that sort of process while
 keeping the DITA itself valid according to the original schema.

I don't think that's appropriate for the core DITA specification itself. Applications like DITA-OT can continue to operate in exactly that way, using those exact attributes, without the two of them being part of the specification. I think that would be true
 of any attribute defined as "intended to store xxxx during intermediate processing",
although I'm not aware of any others defined in that way.

Regards, 

Robert D. Anderson
DITA-OT lead and Co-editor
DITA 1.3 specification,

Digital Services Group 

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