othermeta inheritance

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gbv34
Posts: 105
Joined: Thu Jan 20, 2022 12:36 pm

othermeta inheritance

Post by gbv34 »

Hello,
According to this page:
https://www.oxygenxml.com/dita/1.3/spec ... adata.html
There's no inheritance cascaded from map to topics for the <othermeta> element. However, a client of mine uses othermeta at the map level and expected to see it available for topics. Is there any possible tweak to make it work nonetheless?
Thanks for any feedback.
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Radu
Posts: 9472
Joined: Fri Jul 09, 2004 5:18 pm

Re: othermeta inheritance

Post by Radu »

Hi,

Maybe you could also ask around on the DITA Users List as the DITA standard committee members are registered on it: https://dita-users.groups.io/g/main

Let's try to start with a small example, a DITA Map containing this:

Code: Select all

  <topicref href="topics/introduction.dita">
    <topicmeta>
      <othermeta name="test" content="value"/>
    </topicmeta>
  </topicref>
and a referenced "introduction.dita" simple topic:

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<!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
<topic id="introduction">
    <title>Introduction</title>
    <shortdesc>test</shortdesc>
    <body>
        <p>specific needs.</p>
    </body> 
</topic>
With the DITA OT 3.7 publishing engine I publish the DITA Map to HTML5 setting the "clean.temp=no" parameter and then I look in the transformation temporary files folder inside the "introduction.dita" topic and I find inside it:

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<prolog class="- topic/prolog "><metadata class="- topic/metadata "><othermeta class="- topic/othermeta " content="zuzu" name="test" xtrc="othermeta:1;7:46" xtrf=".../flowers.ditamap"/></metadata></prolog>
So the <othermeta> becomes part of the temporary topic file, meaning that an HTML XSLT customization could probably match it and create some HTML elements from it.

Looking at the specification link you gave me:
https://www.oxygenxml.com/dita/1.3/spec ... adata.html
there is a "Does it cascade to child <topicref> elements?" column and "<othermeta>" has value "no", this means for me that in this case:

Code: Select all

  <topicref href="topics/introduction.dita">
    <topicmeta>
      <othermeta name="test" content="value"/>
    </topicmeta>
     <topicref href="someOtherTopic.dita"/>
  </topicref>
the <othermeta> specified for "introduction.dita" does not cascade and become part also of "someOtherTopic.dita".

Regards,
Radu
Radu Coravu
<oXygen/> XML Editor
http://www.oxygenxml.com
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gbv34
Posts: 105
Joined: Thu Jan 20, 2022 12:36 pm

Re: othermeta inheritance

Post by gbv34 »

Thanks a lot, Radu for the test and explanations. Surprisingly, I didn't get the same results, so I think there's something I need to clarify.
I posted a message on the DITA users list and if I get something interesting in return, I will share it here.
------
Gaspard
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Radu
Posts: 9472
Joined: Fri Jul 09, 2004 5:18 pm

Re: othermeta inheritance

Post by Radu »

Hi,

Linking here to your post for convenience:
https://dita-users.groups.io/g/main/message/46717

You did not mention what DITA OT version you are using.
Also in your DITA Users post you mentioned submaps, if you have problems with metadata from submaps maybe this older forum post will help:
post61684.html#p61684

Regards,
Radu
Radu Coravu
<oXygen/> XML Editor
http://www.oxygenxml.com
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