On 07/30/2016 11:34 PM, mike heer wrote:
Thanks for your reply and comments. First of all I read the document
"Dita for the impatient" and it helped me to grasp the essence. And I
read a lot of other stuff in the past month regarding best practice and
how to customize the PDF rendering (xsl). I came across your name in
many of the publications and see how devoted you are to Dita.
You must be confusing me with someone else. I'm certainly not a DITA
evangelist/guru like for example, Mr Eliot Kimber is.
So I am
really glad directly to talk to you
I made extensive use of reusable content. I successfully created a
troubleshooting manual with around a hundred fault messages, using a
troubleshooting topic for each of it, but all the content is simply
referenced (fault, cause and remedy).
I also use a reference file for re-usable content appearing in meta
data. That brings me to my map file. Yes, I use only topicrefs in my
map, to reference to the individual topics.
But my map file also contains meta information, such as the product name
for example. And this meta information I keep in a meta reference file.
I do not understand what shall be wrong with that, keeping the meta
information in one place and reference to it?.
There is nothing in wrong in that. This use of conref certainly makes sense.
I also made sure I had no typo anywhere in my conref link.
Your conref in the DITA map is 100% correct in its XML form:
---
<prodname conref="Test_ConrefMeta.dita#conref_meta_reuse/product"/>
---
Altering the
link and or the target id made the dita-ot complain.
There is no need to do this as 1) this use of conref makes sense. 2)
Your conref in its XML form is 100 correct.
On the other hand
using XXE to convert my Dita map to PDF worked without a problem (still
have not tried all and will figure out more and more) where else dita-ot
had many errors reported before i managed to convert my first PDF file
(using the same map and topics) because I did not strictly adhere to
Dita rules. So it seemed to me XXE is more tolerant when violating the
rules.
Not really.
It's XMLmind DITA Converter which is more lenient than the DITA OT
because by default, hence when embedded in XXE, XMLmind DITA Converter
does not validate its input. (XMLmind DITA Converter is our replacement
for the DITA OT. See http://www.xmlmind.com/ditac/).
Aside this conref issue, your DITA map contains a empty <reltable>,
which is incorrect.
Notice that XMLmind XML Editor displays a *red* *error* *icon* at the
bottom/left of its main window, which signals a severe validity problem.
I guess that's why the DITA-OT reports errors.
I attached a simple sample to this mail, which causes the error messages
when loading the map in XXE editor. The files are:
Test_FaultMap.ditamap
Test_Fault_001.dita
Test_ConrefMeta.dita
ErrorMessage.png (screenshot of error message)
The Test_FaultMap.ditamap contains a topicref element to
Test_Fault_001.dita and in the metadata a conref to the product ID in
the Test_ConrefMeta.dita (creates the error when loading the map into XXE)
The Test_Fault_001.dita itself uses the same conref to the product id,
without an error message
Well, you have uncovered a conref bug in XMLmind XML Editor. XMLmind
DITA Converter which uses its own implementation of conref, does *not*
have this bug.
Your
---
<prodname conref="Test_ConrefMeta.dita#conref_meta_reuse/product"/>
---
is OK. Keep using it. We'll fix the bug in the next version of XMLmind
XML Editor.
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