One of the elements that is unique to the linklist
structure is also one of the least understood: the linkinfo
element. The DITA 1.2 Spec itself merely says that it lets you “place a descriptive paragraph after the links that are contained in a linklist
element.” But a linklist already allows the title
and desc
elements to provide description, so how does this element add anything more to the design? Naturally, there is something more to this story, something we can trace from the foundations of human culture, as it were. (more…)
linking
The linktext element
All links can be seen as having a human-facing component and a computer-facing component. Computers need only the name of a resource in order to form a fully qualified URL or link to it. But human readers obviously need to know something about that resource in order to decide whether to navigate to it. This hint can be (more…)
The linklist element
Writing with a sense of lasting legacy means being mindful of how your information may be browsed and reused beyond the moment. One way to represent persisting sequence and structure is with lists. An unordered list of related links needs nothing more than linkpool as a container, but when sequence and sub-groups matter, (more…)
The linkpool element
Every few years, as elections for government offices come around, voters come out to the election centers and line up to cast ballots for their favorite candidates out of a pool of names. The tally of votes represents a form of ranking and selection for that pool of candidates. Links are like candidates; (more…)