In the architecture spec, under "Map from customized document type to
DITA during preprocessing", it says:
"While specialization can be used to adapt document types for many
different authoring purposes, there are some authoring requirements that
cannot be met through specialization - particularly splitting or
renaming attributes, *and simple renaming of elements*." [My emphasis.]
I think that by "simple renaming of elements" is meant the desire to
simply map one name to a standard-defined name without creating a
complete layer of specialization.
However, the way this paragraph is worded it seems to imply that
specialization cannot be used to do element renaming, which is clearly
not true--I can create a specialization layer that does nothing but
create new element type names for base types without otherwise changing
the content models and constraints.
I think it might be clearer to break the paragraph up into two to make
it clearer what specialization can't do (split or rename attributes) vs
what can't be done simply, naming renaming of elements, maybe something
like:
While specialization can be used to adapt document types for many
different authoring purposes, there are some authoring requirements that
cannot be met through specialization, in particular, splitting or
renaming attributes. In addition, one cannot simply rename element types
within a module without creating a separate specialization module. Thus
it can be useful to define a non-DITA-conforming authoring document type
that is then mapped to conforming DITA markup using a transform.
Cheers,
E.
--
W. Eliot Kimber
Professional Services
Innodata Isogen
8500 N. Mopac, Suite 402
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(214) 954-5198
ekimber@innodata-isogen.com
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