Useful Schematron checks for DITA authoring

[chrispitude]

Hi all,

I wanted to start a discussion thread where we can share useful Schematron checks for DITA authoring.

Here's a check that reports text elements that begin/end with spaces:

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  <rule context="p|ph|codeph|filename|indexterm|xref|user-defined|user-input" role="warning">
    <let name="firstNodeIsElement" value="node()[1] instance of element()"/>
    <let name="lastNodeIsElement" value="node()[last()] instance of element()"/>
    <report test="(not($firstNodeIsElement) and matches(.,'^\s',';j')) or (not($lastNodeIsElement) and matches(.,'\s$',';j'))">Textual elements should not begin or end with whitespace.</report>
  </rule>

You can set the context to the list of elements to check. This check has some extra machinery to avoid false reporting of elements like this:

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<p><xref ...> provides more information on this.</p>

where the <xref> resolves as empty and the space after the <xref> causes it to report.

[Radu]

Hi Chris,

Adding a reference to the Schematron rules we use in the Oxygen User's Guide:

https://github.com/oxygenxml/userguide/ ... DITA/rules

Most of our Schematron rules are here:

https://github.com/oxygenxml/userguide/ ... vanced.sch

Besides Schematron rules we also have a style guide, a separate DITA Map with topics in which our technical documentation writers write rules about how to write the documentation.
An older blog post describes some of the rules:

https://blog.oxygenxml.com/topics/SchematronBCs.html

Also George Bina created this project:

https://github.com/oxygenxml/dim

which has some sample rules contributed by Comtech and attempts to produce the Schematron rules using XSLT from DITA topics which describe them.

Regards,
Radu

[chrispitude]

Here is a check that reminds writers to populate cross-book links with reference text:

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<pattern id="refs">
  <rule context="link|xref" role="error">
    <report test="not(node()) and contains(@keyref, '.')">Empty cross-book reference; please add the target text.</report>
  </rule>
</pattern>

[Radu]

Hi,

It's a good rule if you use key scopes only for cross publication references. If you use them for internal links then it would show errors even if the processor is able to come up with by itself with titles for links.

Regards,
Radu

[chrispitude]

If you keep all your DITA content inside a dita/ directory, here is a check for any @href file references that references a file above the dita/ directory level:

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<!-- compute how many directory levels exist past '/dita/' (or -1 if it doesn't exist) -->
<let name="this_file_depth" value="if (contains(base-uri(), '/dita/')) then (count(tokenize(substring-after(base-uri(), '/dita/'), '/'))-1) else (-1)"/>

<!-- make sure there aren't more '../' than our directory levels past '/dita/' -->
<pattern id="check_depth">
  <rule context="*[contains(@href, '../') and not(@scope = 'external')]" role="error">
    <report test="($this_file_depth >= 0) and ((count(tokenize(@href, '\.\./'))-1) > $this_file_depth)">@href refers to a file outside the current dita/ directory.</report>
  </rule>
</pattern>

[Radu]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for posting your custom Schematron check, maybe others will find it useful.

Regards,
Radu