OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC

  • 1.  Spec references to the solidus character

    Posted 10-27-2010 17:58 
    Hi everyone,

In a few places, the DITA 1.2 spec refers to a "solidus" character. E.g.
"For references to non-topic elements within topics and non-topicref
elements within maps, the value of the @keyref attribute is a key name,
a solidus ("/"), and the ID of the target element."

I believe what is meant here is a "forward slash", not a solidus which
is a different character and doesn't work in file paths. 
See:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidus_(punctuation)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_(punctuation)

Is this a big enough problem to require an erratum to the spec?

Regards,
Su-Laine


Su-Laine Yeo
Solutions Consultant 
JustSystems Canada, Inc.
Office: 778-327-6356 
syeo@justsystems.com


  • 2.  Re: [dita] Spec references to the solidus character

    Posted 10-27-2010 18:07 
    For myself I was trained at IBM to prefer "solidus" rather than "slash"
because of some slang associations with "slash" in British English. I was
not aware that there was in fact a separate solidus character in Unicode.

Given that the I would think that correcting "solidus" to "slash" would be
appropriate if there is any chance of people taking the spec to literally
mean the Unicode solidus character.

If it's not possible to correct this sort of non-substantive typo before
final publication then I would agree it should be an erratum.

Cheers,

E.

On 10/27/10 12:53 PM, "Su-Laine Yeo"


  • 3.  RE: [dita] Spec references to the solidus character

    Posted 11-03-2010 21:05 
    I doubt there is any chance of people taking the spec to literally mean
the solidus character. But we should change "solidus" to "slash" anyway.

A co-worker remarked that to make things perfectly clear, we should say
somewhere that everywhere we mention the term "slash" we are referring
to the Unicode character U+002F. 

Su-Laine




    
                                                
    
					
                                                    

        
                                                
				
    
                                                
    
                                                    
                                                        
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  • 4.  Re: [dita] Spec references to the solidus character

    Posted 11-03-2010 21:46 
    I'll add that elaboration to the DITA 1.3 proposal/update item that I 
need to log about this issue, since we are not changing anything for now.

BTW, I think a discussion about terminology in specs could be an 
interesting blog post for someone in the TC, thereby helping to at least 
get the discussion into searchable space for now.
--
Don

On 11/3/2010 4:01 PM, Su-Laine Yeo wrote:
> I doubt there is any chance of people taking the spec to literally mean
> the solidus character. But we should change "solidus" to "slash" anyway.
>
> A co-worker remarked that to make things perfectly clear, we should say
> somewhere that everywhere we mention the term "slash" we are referring
> to the Unicode character U+002F.
>
> Su-Laine
>
>
>
> 
    
                                                
    
					
                                                    

        
                                                
				
    
                                                
    
                                                    
                                                        
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  • 5.  Re: [dita] Spec references to the solidus character

    Posted 12-15-2010 20:52 
    Thinking about this more because I was trying to find the Unicode character
code for SOLIDUS and realized what I hadn't before, which is that Unicode
names the forward slash "SOLIDUS".

Whether that is absolutely correct or not, the DITA 1.2 spec is at least
consistent with the Unicode standard on this account. So I'm not sure this
is really an erratum.

Both the solidus and slash entries say:

"Both the ISO   and Unicode


  • 6.  RE: [dita] Spec references to the solidus character

    Posted 12-17-2010 23:32 
    Thanks Eliot. I've logged the solidus terminology issue in the list of DITA 1.3 proposals. We should make the spec clearer then. 

Cheers,
Su-Laine


    
                                                
    
					
                                                    

        
                                                
				
    
                                                
    
                                                    
                                                        
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