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Re: New element for Step alternatives?


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/ Michael Smith <smith@xml-doc.org> was heard to say:
| Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> writes:
|
|> I'm trying to recap where we stand on this proposal.
|> 
|> There seems to be general agreement that it's a good idea. The
|> question is, exactly what should the markup look like?
|
| I think there are some shortcomings in Procedure that we probably need
| to address. But rather than going at it piecemeal, I'd like to suggest
| that we consider taking a look at the Procedure model as a whole, and
| deal with coming up with revisions that will address not just the lack
| of "choice" markup and the more recent "Task" proposal that Sabine
| submitted, but other potential changes that might be worthwhile.

It's been some time since this was posted and there hasn't been a lot
of discussion. Some more comprehensive "task" markup might be a good
idea, but I'd like to see some concrete proposals.

In the meantime, we've got two issues on the table that have been
lingering. It seems to me that we can either abandon them, try to find
simple solutions for them, or leave them lingering while we
investigate some larger design options.

Personally, I'm inclined to the middle course. To wit:

* Add alternatives to procedure as I suggested previously:

    Replace 'substeps' in step with (substeps|stepalternatives)
    Both substeps and stepalternatives contain (step+). For substeps,
    the processing expectation is "choose all, in the specified order".
    For stepalternatives, the processing expectation is "choose exactly one".

  And allow stepalternatives at the top level.

* Add "topic" markup to cover the more general case of "task" as well
  as a number of other things.

  The general "shape" of <topic> would be:

    optional blockinfo, component.mix stuff, followed by
    <topicsection> a new (recursive) section element for topic
    sections.

My two cents.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

- -- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | Oh well, no matter what happens,
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | there's always death.--Napoleon
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee |
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