[oXygen-user] topicref @href vs @conref and author mode

[Radu Coravu]

Dear Mario,

Thank you for contacting us.

I understand your usecase and why you were renaming topicref @href to 
@conref.
The Oxygen 10.x versions were more relaxed when resolving @conref and 
they were indeed expanding the @conref in the Author page even in your case.
In Oxygen 11 a stricter validation is done and the following error 
should appear when using a @conref between incompatible source and target:

---------------
Conref was not expanded:
The source element "topicref" with class value "- map/topicref " is not 
a generalization of target element "topic" with class value "- topic/topic "
----------------

The reason you are getting
---------------
"Error - recursion detected when expanding reference: 
topics/task_task123.dita#topic123!"
---------------
instead is that there is a bug in Oxygen 11 which was already fixed a 
couple of days ago. The fix will be incorporated in a new Oxygen 11 
build available from our site in a short time.

Anyway, changing the @href to @conref is incorrect and Oxygen 11 will no 
longer expand such content references in the Author (because the source 
and target are incompatible elements).
Also, the fact that the published output also does not work is correct 
(so in Oxygen 11 the published output and the expansion of @conref in 
Author are similar).

The @conref attribute can basically be used on a topic reference only to 
reference to another topic reference.

And now for the workaround:
In a future version we will think to provide an option to expand @href's 
in the Author mode for DITA Maps just as if they would be @conref's.
In the meantime I attached a modified version of the dita extension 
library which does just that (expands all topicref hrefs to the 
referenced content).
Just rename the "OXYGEN_INSTALL_DIR\frameworks\dita\dita.jar" library 
and copy the attached library in its place.
It should work as you want so you will no longer have to change @href's 
to @conref's.

Please tell us if the modified library worked.

Regards,
Radu
-- 
Radu Coravu
<oXygen/> XML Editor, Schema Editor and XSLT Editor/Debugger
http://www.oxygenxml.com

Mario Madunic wrote:
>
> All the examples of topicrefs I’ve seen use @href when referencing 
> topics. When viewed in author mode all I see is “topicref” with a grey 
> background. But when I change the @href to @conref in 10.2 and 10.3 
> the topicrefs are resolved and I can see basically what the output 
> will look like. In 11 the following error appears:
>
>  
>
> Error - recursion detected when expanding reference: 
> topics/task_task123.dita#topic123!
>
>  
>
> Should the topicrefs only contain @href?
>
>  
>
> The above behaviour is a really nice to have. Also tried having both 
> @href and @conref and found that the PDF plug-in in the OT does not 
> output the content that is referenced. Only when @href exists (no 
> @conref) does the PDF plug-in resolve all the references.
>
>  
>
> We like the behaviour of seeing the map resolved in author mode, as it 
> will show what the output will basically look like and very quickly. 
> We prefer this over continually parsing the map into PDF as our 
> manuals are 1000+ pages and image intensive and does take quite a bit 
> of time.
>
>  
>
> Marijan (Mario) Madunic
>
> Publishing Specialist
>
> New Flyer Industries
>
> (204) 934 8815
>
> 
>
>  
>

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