OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC

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Attribute generalization: escape character?

  • 1.  Attribute generalization: escape character?

    Posted 02-14-2007 06:43

    WRT "Attribute generalization" in ditaspec:

    How is an attribute generalized if its value contains a parenthesis?  Using the example in this section, what if instead of
      jobrole="programmer"
    I had
      jobrole="programmer(s)"
    or some other literal string that contains parentheses?  Presumably there is a mechanism to escape it during generalization and unescape it during respecialization.  This mechanism isn't described in the spec.

    My followup question is how does a generalizer distinguish generalization of the fully-specialized
      jobrole="programmer(s)"
    where the parentheses are real parentheses, and the partly-generalized
      person="jobrole(programmer)"
    where the parentheses are bracketing the actual value of the specialized attribute "jobrole"?  It seems that the generalization process needs to know that jobrole is specialized from person even when the partial generalization from jobrole to person has already been done, which appears to defeat the purpose of generalization somewhat.

    --
    Deborah Pickett
    Deborah_Pickett@moldflow.com