Oxygen XML Forum

Hi,
our reusable content is placed within keyed topics via IDs.
It would also be very nice to see and pick all IDs of a keyed topic in the DITA Reusabel Component View.

Hi,

That's included in our todo list for Oxygen 19.1.
Right now the view is not fully finished, it will probably also contain a "Components" tab showing ID elements and allowing you to insert conkeyrefs.
I would see the interaction with the view look like this for inserting conkeyrefs:
First choose a key, then maybe right click it and possibly say something like "Show Component IDs"? This could switch the view to the "Components" tab where only the IDs from this specific key would be shown. Then for each ID you could either drag and drop it or right click it and choose to insert a conkeyref to it...

Do you have other ideas about how the interaction could work?

Regards,
Radu

Radu wrote: That's included in our todo list for Oxygen 19.1.

Great Radu, that´s what I wanted to hear

I support your idea to transfer the conkeyref browser view and functionality into the DITA Reusable Component View.

Radu wrote: First choose a key, then maybe right click it and possibly say something like "Show Component IDs"?

In my opinion it would fasten the authoring workflow, if the author does not have to select the key before selecting the content ID.
An experienced author knows the ID he wants to insert/link and would preffer to enter it directly into the search box without selecting the parent map/key.

Maybe you can add a new expandable list item level for the IDs directly into the existing DITA Reusable Components list.
Of course, it could happen that you have the same IDs in several topics but it would not become a usability problem if the filtered list shows the key and map level above each ID.
However I do not know if this solution is technicaly feasible for you or if it would result in considerable loss of performance showing all IDs of the selected root map at once.

Another question is the desired behavior for double clicking a ID list entry in the DITA Reusable Component View (the fastes way to use a key).
Actually a double click on a key2topic list item results in a xref entry to the key and a double click on a key2keyword list item results in a ph keyref.
A double click on a key/id list entry could result in xref or conkeyref.
We would preffer conkeyref because we use most of our keys for content reuse and only rarely for links. But this is a matter of taste and depends on project and content architecture.
The ideal solution would be an option to switch the double click functionality in the preferences.

Thanks for your interest and engagemant!

Hi,

That's great feedback, I will add it on the opened internal issue.
That extra "Components" tab we are working on could by default gather (and this gathering phase would take some time) and then present all IDs from all topics referenced in the DITA Map. Double clicking an ID there would have Oxygen check if there is a key defined for the ID's parent topic and prefer to insert a conkeyref if this is the case. Most people link to entire topics so the possibility to conkeyref to a subtopic element also seems more common than the possibility that the end user wants to insert a link.
I would still maybe allow the user to first search for a key in the first existing "Keys" tab and then choose to view in the second tab only IDs pertaining to that key, so use the key information as a filter in the second tab as there may be auto-generated IDs which the end user may not remember.
Also for each presented ID we need to show some kind of a preview, either as a separate column in the list of IDs or as a small preview area at the bottom of the IDs list.

Regards,
Radu