@conkeyref with @conref

[juliov27]

Hi,

According to the spec, if a @conkeyref cannot be resolved, a processor should look to the @conref attribute to resolve the reuse. If both are not resolvable, the processor SHOULD issue a warning. However, with oXygen 19 and whatever DITA-OT is bundled, this is not the case. I'm unsure where the issue resides, so I'm starting here to see if the problem is within the oXygen OT extensions or if this is a bug to be reported to the DITA-OT. Thanks.

[Radu]

Hi Julio,

Discussing only about the DITA OT publishing part, I tested with DITA OT 2.5.2 and there are two cases:

1) The conkeyref is to a key which is not defined.
2) The conkeyref uses a defined key but points to an @id attribute which is not defined in the target topic.

For (1) the conref fallback seems to be taken into account. For (2) it is not taken into account.

The DITA 1.3 specification:

http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/dita/v1 ... fattribute

seems to precisely describe the behavior for case (1):

When the key name specified by the @conkeyref attribute is not defined and the element also specifies a @conref attribute, the @conref attribute is used to determine the content reference relationship.

but it does not describe the behavior for case (2).
So I'm not sure what the behavior of the DITA OT should be in case (2).

Regards,
Radu

[juliov27]

Hi Radu,

I would expect that if the target id is also incorrect, that the processing should treat it the same as a broken key; the target isn't located so it would look to the @conref for resolution. I assume this discussion is out of scope for this forum. Is it something to bring up to the TC?

[juliov27]

I forgot to mention. Based on what I saw, in case 2, the OT doesn't resolve the link at all so you get no output.

[Radu]

Hi Julio,

Yes, so first maybe you can ask the DITA TC about how a publishing engine should behave in (2). If they give a clear answer you could try to open an issue for it in the DITA OT issues list.

Regards,
Radu

[BobbyG66]

We just ran into this problem.
Our old system was on DITA 1.0 and the conkeyrefs worked there, we just upgraded to DITA 1.3 and the conkeyrefs "broke".
We have several brands and were using keys to insert the brand name into notes that were then conreffed.

Interested to see if there are any workarounds. I looked at conrefpush, but not sure if that would work.

Open to any suggestions or ideas.
Thanks
Bob

[Radu]

Hi Bob,

The original problem posted here is about having a DITA element with both the @conkeyref and the @conref attributes set on it.
From what you are saying, I think your problem is closer to this problem I reported on the DITA OT issues list and which is still open:

https://github.com/dita-ot/dita-ot/issues/2420

Regards,
Radu

[BobbyG66]

Radu,
That issue looks more relevant.
Thanks, Bob