RE: How many levels of indents and heads are reasonable?

["Van Laan, Krista" <KVanlaan -at- verisign -dot- com>]

I agree with John's proposal that you can define the number of levels
you want to stay within and structure any documentation to fit. I think
4 levels is enough, although I can see going to 5. I haven't had any
training in DITA and didn't know if there were recommendations on this
subject, which is why I threw it out for discussion. 

Krista
 
John Posada said:
> 
> > Asking how many levels of indents and heads are reasonable 
> > is asking how big of a system is it reasonable to document.  
> 
> I don't agree. I propose that you can define the number of 
> levels you want to stay within, then structure your 
> documentation to fit within that definition (and I think this 
> is pretty much a mandatory definition when you are defining 
> your DITA schema). 
> 
> Take the two examples...I've picked the subject of databases 
> because in an enterprise system, databases and their 
> documentation can be huge:
> 
> 1.0 Database
>     1.1 Database1
>         1.1.1 Overview
>         1.1.2 Specifications
>             1.1.2.1 Permission
>             1.1.2.2 Attributes
>             1.1.2.3 Stored Procedues
>             1.1.2.4 Triggers
>             1.1.2.5 Indexes
>             1.1.2.6 Replication
>     1.2 Database2
>         1.2.1 Overview
>         1.2.2 Specifications
>             1.2.2.1 Permission
>             1.2.2.2 Attributes
>             1.2.2.3 Stored Procedues
>             1.2.2.4 Triggers
>             1.2.2.5 Indexes
>             1.2.2.6 Replication
> 
> or
> 
> 1.0 Database Model
>     1.1 Database1
>         1.1.1 Overview
>         1.1.2 Permissions
>         1.1.3 Atrributes
>         1.1.4 Triggers
>         1.1.5 Indexes
>     1.2 Database1
>         1.2.1 Overview
>         1.2.2 Permissions
>         1.2.3 Atrributes
>         1.2.4 Triggers
>         1.2.5 Indexes
> 2.0 Database Replication
>    2.1 Database1
>    2.2 Database2
> 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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