I'd agree with you here, Eliot.
I read it as a "don't blame us if you break things when subsetting"
kind of statement, and proceeded to ignore it in my own customization -
though it did kind of tick me off.
--Dana
W. Eliot Kimber wrote:
In
the architecture spec, the section "Customized subset document types
for authoring" says:
"Customized subset document types are not compliant with the DITA
standard, and may not be supported by standards-compliant tools."
First, change the term "compliant" to "conformant". One complies with
regulations but conforms to standards.
At first read I didn't understand why this sentence was true.
I think it is true if the intent is that all "conforming DITA document
types" must allow as valid all documents that use the declared modules
and domains. Have I got this correct?
If that's the intent, then I think there needs to be a statement to
that effect, otherwise it's not necessarily obvious why a document type
that will otherwise only produce valid (against the doctypes as
delivered) documents is considered to be "invalid" and the statement
reads as something of an ad-hominem prescription.
Note too that this section and what it describes is materially
different from the next section, which talks about renaming attributes
and so on, which of course will result in document types that cannot be
conforming DITA documents types, if for no other reason then they fail
to satisfy the rules for specialization.
Cheers,
E.