The Many-Headed Hydra of Branch Filtering: Rendering reused DITA topics to HTML with different filtering
The DITA 1.3 branch filtering feature allows a topic with conditional content to be used multiple times in the same publication with different filtering conditions applied. In monolithic output formats such as PDF and EPUB the result must be multiple renderings of the topic each time it is used, reflecting the filtering applied, indistinguishable from using different topics instead of branch filtering. But when the output is not monolithic, such as HTML chunked at the topic level, the rendering options are much wider and it is not immediately obvious what the best presentation solution should be. Should the result be multiple HTML files? A single HTML file with dynamically-rendered conditions? What are the navigation implications? What are the search implications? The Branch Filtering feature raises a number of important new questions that could not occur before DITA 1.3 because filtering applied to an entire map tree. This presentation outlines the new possibilities and suggests possible responses.
What can attendees expect to learn?
This presentation highlights subtle-but-important considerations for the rendering of topics in the context of branch filtering, helping DITA users both understand that the issues exist and start thinking about the most appropriate solutions for their content and readers.
Meet the Presenter
Eliot Kimber is a founding and active member of the DITA Technical Committee. He has been working with structured markup for more than 30 years. Eliot is also a co-editor of the HyTime standard. Eliot currently focuses on the application of DITA to the business challenges of Publishers. Eliot is the founder and principle developer of the open-source DITA for Publishers project. Eliot lives and works with his family in Austin, Texas.