[oXygen-user] DITA Feature Request -- Insert href to files

[Sorin Ristache]

Thank you for your suggestions. In the next version of Oxygen each of 
the Link actions available on the toolbar with custom actions for the 
DITA topic document type (insert a cross reference - xref, a file 
reference, a web link or a related link) will allow choosing a file or 
an ID from a file as the target of the reference with a dialog in which 
the target file can be selected with the help of a file chooser. We will 
consider also your two suggestions for inserting such references by drag 
and drop or by selecting the target element and pasting the id at the 
insertion point.


Thank you for your suggestions,
Sorin


Seraphim Larsen wrote:
> It would be nice to have a better method for inserting the hrefs for 
> <xref>, <link>, <conref>, and <image>.
> 
> As far as I can tell, the current feature set allows you to insert these 
> elements, but then you need to hand-code the href.
> 
> Would be nice to have a dialog box that allows you to select the target 
> file -- for example, something like the way you can currently insert 
> conrefs.
> 
> Even nicer, it would be great to be able to drag-and-drop from the 
> Project pane.  For example, drag a topic file, and drop into an open 
> DITA file (in Text or Author view), and an xref is inserted.   
> Ctrl-drag, and a Related Link is inserted.   Drag a graphic, and an 
> <image> element is inserted, with the href already correctly defined.
> 
> To get an xref to a particular element, it would be nice to have a 
> feature something like this:
> 
>     * Select the target element
>     * Select menu item "Create xref to target element", which results in
>       the following:
>           o If the selected element has no id attribute, an id attribute
>             is created, or a dialog box opens, telling the user to
>             specify the id attribute
>           o The clipboard is then populated with the <xref> element with
>             the href already correctly defined.
>           o An optional dialog box could appear, telling the user that
>             the xref has been formed and is on the clipboard
>     * You then go to the place where you want to put the xref, and just
>       paste it in. 
>           o Oxygen should adjust the syntax of the href, depending on
>             where the user pastes it in.  This would not just be a
>             simple copy-paste, but would require some additional
>             intelligence from Oxygen:
>                 + If the xref is pointing to content in the same file,
>                   the following syntax is used (as per the DITA Language
>                   Spec
>                   <http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/OS/langspec/langref/xref.html#xref__attrs>):
>                        href="#topicID"
>                        href="#topicID/elemID
>                 + If the xref target is in a different file:
>                        href="filename.dita#topicID"
>                        href="fname.dita#topicID/elemID"
> 
> It would be nice to have similar copy/paste functionality for conrefs.   
> Much easier than navigating through a dialog box.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Seraphim