OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC

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ITEM: Cross-references to Topicheads and Implicit Title-only Topics

  • 1.  ITEM: Cross-references to Topicheads and Implicit Title-only Topics

    Posted 03-29-2009 14:01
    [NOTE: this was my first attempt to articulate the issues around xrefs to
    topicheads. I am posting it for background and history. The subsequent
    discussion has superseded much of this analysis but I think my summary of
    the original issue and discussion in the TC conn calls might be useful--WEK]
    
    This is my attempt to summarize the issue and, hopefully, allow us to come
    to closure.
    
    The original issue stemmed from the fact that DITA allows cross references
    from topics to topicrefs within maps. However, through DITA 1.1 there is no
    explicit language about what that means from a processing standpoint and
    there are several possible cases which may have or should have or could have
    different processing implications.
    
    For cross references from topics to topicrefs I've identified the following
    possible cases. In this discussion, by "topicref" I mean a topicref element
    that points directly or indirectly to a topic. By "topichead" I mean a
    topicref element that has only a navigation title. By "textref" I mean a
    topicref element that contains only a