conref and mandatory attributes

[MarcB]

Running XMetaL Author Enterprise 9.0.0.53 on Windows 7 Enterprise.

We use the conref feature quite extensively to distribute reused text to our documentation modules.
One example is reusing the element from a master bookmap in multiple “local” book maps for release and version information.
So a “local” book map would have something like
In the master bookmap, we have something like

However, on Save of the “local” book map, XMetaL throws a parsing error, based on the fact that requires the @version attribute.

Should the XMetaL parser not follow the conref and notice that the reused element is present and correct?

On a side note: we tried shutting the parser up by inserting a “local” @version attribute, but found that in production (Webworks ePublisher/Automap), the “local” value trumps the conref.

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[Derek Read]

Any attribute (or element) that is required by the DTD (and therefore the XML Recommendation) must be in the document otherwise the document is considered invalid and XMetaL Author (and any other validating XML parser) will notify you via a validation error.

In this case I suspect you will need to use the value “-dita-use-conref-target”. That will allow it to pass the basic XML validation test against the DTD, and it should cause tools like the DITA OT or whatever else you are using to pull in the value specified in the target (using the rules defined by the DITA specs).

See: http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/OS/langspec/common/ditauseconreftarget.html

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[MarcB]

Thanks Derek for that link, I had overlooked that aspect.
Works as designed 🙂

Marc

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