How do I configure a pre-approved lsit of prolog metadata values

[Bradley Shoebottom]

I would like to distribute a file to several authors that would give them a list of pre-configured topic and map metadata values for things like "author" "bookpartno" "vrm" "prodname" etc. This ensures no typos in the metadata. Is there an equivalent to the conditonal tage file "ct_config" for prolog info?

[Derek Read]

There is no equivalent. I can think of several options:

1) Create a number of templates that have information already in the file. Templates go into the template subfolder in each installation, or if you are using a CMS system they may end up there (consult the docs for your particular CMS integration). Depending on what you need to do you could end up with way too many templates. If there are some

2) Create snippets of XML that contain the information you need, store them, and paste them in when needed.

3) Specialize DITA. This would be a lot more involved, but would allow you to change the attributes for certain elements from CDATA (most in DITA are defined as such) to an enumerated list of values. We don't document how to create specialized DITA DTDs but we do document how to integrate them with the product. I would recommend the tutorial's written by Eliot Kimber if you wish to pursue specialization.

4) Contract someone to modify the XFT forms that handle metadata and have them make changes you need. You would want to write your contract so that they would support their work (as this is not something we support).