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Guidance for explaining a command or elements in a code block instead of callouts #540

@Preeticp

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@Preeticp

We can not use callouts in code blocks for the following reasons:

  • Callouts are not supported in DITA: Unlike AsciiDoc, DITA does not support callouts as a method to add annotations to specific lines in verbatim blocks.
  • Callouts do not work for AI: Because callouts are not supported in DITA, (and we're not making changes to DITA-OT) there isn't semantic markup for an AI agent to understand what is happening or to output that semantic markup properly.
  • Callouts are not used by our competitors: See: Competitor analysis on callouts and code blocks

Currently in our documentation we use callouts for the following use cases:

  • Use Case 1: Add relevant additional information about a single line of code, element, or variable.
    Image

  • Use Case 2: Add relevant additional information about multiple lines of code, elements, or explain the structure of a sample YAML file
    Image

  • Use Case 3: Provide information on placeholders/variables
    Image

  • Use Case 4: Notes about a particular line in the code

We need to ensure that the SSG has updated guidance on replacing callouts with simple sentences, bulleted/unordered lists, definition lists or Admonition style as appropriate depending on context.

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