Reply To: Insertion of @type attributes when loading maps

[Derek Read]

I'm a little surprised this issue is just coming into play for you. This was a feature included with the XMetaL Author Enterprise 6.0 and earlier  releases that has since been changed. A CMS integration is not needed as the code runs as part of the standard DITA functionality included with the 6.0 release.

To reproduce this with an unmodified (no CMS, no 3rd party code) installation of XMetaL Author Enterprise 6.0 (6.0.1.030 and earlier) all you need do is to open a map containing a (that references a DITA topic file using @href) but does not have the @type attribute set. The topic's @type will be set based on an examination of the topic file. For specialized topics the unspecialized topic type will be set.

Once a value has been set I don't believe it will be altered. So if you manually set the values they should remain as you set them. You can do that either using the Attribute Inspector (XML View of Map only) or in the Topic Reference Properties dialog on the “Special Attributes” tab. I've only tried 6.0.1.030 so if you have a different release the behaviour might be different.

There are no patches for this for 6.0 as the behaviour was changed for the 7.0 release, with the same new behaviour also present in 8.0.

We've had the opposite complaint since changing this feature but have yet to decide whether we will implement a user configurable setting to control it. It seems the majority of people prefer their XML to be as “clean” as possible (what we normally strive for). The main reason this feature was implemented for older versions was to be able to show a nice icon next to topicrefs inside the map editor. Those (few people I believe) that want this attribute value set in 7.0 and 8.0 must do so manually.

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