Re: [Serna] A better way to display @ttributes and their legal values

Hedley,

Thank you for these suggestions. We'll work them out.

Regards,
Daria

On Wed, 9 Jan 2008, Hedley Finger wrote:

> 
> While writing DITA documents, I find the attributes window very frustrating.  For example, <image>
elements generally contain pixmaps of screen shots,
> generally larger than wanted, so every time I have to add a scale attribute and enter the scale number.
> 
> Instead of the Serna developers having to decide, for each element, which attributes to show in the pane,
why not let the user record these as
> preferences.
> 
> Thus, if @scale is always being added to <image>, after I have done it for the first time, why not let me click
a button to record that I always want
> this attribute to be displayed, potentially available.  The button could open a dialogue to allow me to
specify that @scale is to be always available
> for any <image> element anywhere, or could let me specify one or more XPath absolute or wildcard
expressions.  Then, if I always scale to 60 percent
> in <steps> but 75 percent in <section> elements, these could be separately recorded.
> 
> The attribute would not be automatically inserted into the element (but this could be made a Preference
option) but would be listed (perhaps greyed
> out) in the attributes list with the preferred value.  Then clicking on the attribute would insert it with
the default value, or the value could be
> edited.
> 
> The DTD can specify a list of legal values which appear as a drop-down in the attributes list.  But this is no
good for attributes which, say, the
> documentation manager has decreed a limited range of custom values.  For example, @audience might have
the legal values engineer, end-user,
> administrator at one implementer's site.  If you have a team of writers, perhaps including temporary
contractors, how do you ensure that they type in
> only the correct values for each free-form attribute which nevertheless should only contain specific values.
> 
> In my proposed attribute-customisation dialogue, you could also specify a list of required values which
would appear as a drop-down in the attributes
> list, just as DTD-specified alternatives do now.  This would do for a single writer but in a team the
administrator could somehow deploy these legal
> values via some overriding mechanism.
> 
> Regards,
> Hedley
> 
> --
> Hedley Stewart Finger
> 28 Regent Street   Camberwell VIC 3124   Australia
> Tel. +61 3 9809 1229   Mobile +61 412 461 558,
> E-mail < mailto:hfinger@...>
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