Map topic attributes vs <othermeta>?

[jll2065]

Hi. I'm new at XSL-FO and I'm trying to build a prototype to convince the big bosses to transition from Word to DITA-style documentation. I have to do it for cheap (aka in-house). I also want to make sure I'm future proofing my prototype to minimize the technical debt.

I'm currently building a custom plugin with DITA-OT based on the pdf2 plugin. I need to pull in certain information about each document and put that information on the cover page and headers of my PDF. I'd also like to make sure the information can eventually be used for web searches if we ever get to html output.

I need to get the following information that doesn't seem to fit in ditamap > topicmeta:

• The document ID that's assigned to each document in our QMS, for example, T-0256.
• The current document revision, for example, Rev E ( I see there is a topic attribute for this, but I'd like this info to be in one place rather than split between topic attribute and metadata. Mainly for consistency on the authoring side.)

In case you're wondering, I'm not using bookmaps at this time because each document is small(ish) and limited to a very specific maintenance task (prep, task, post-task testing). Chapters don't seem to make sense for me.

With all that said, my questions are:

• Where is the best place to put the document ID and rev in the ditamap? It's OK if the metadata cascades down (I think).
• How do I access that info so I can put it in a variable? For example, I considered putting it in topicmeta > othermeta but I don't know how to get to it in my root-processing.xml... With normal metadata, I know I can pull it in via the attribute (select="(//opentopic:map//[contains(@Class,' topic/vrm ')]/@Version)[1]"/>) -- I copied this from a book, FYI. But, with othermeta, it seems like I would need some kind of if/then statement because @name and @content aren't unique.
• Do you guys have any suggested reading material or things you wish you'd done differently with metadata? I'm absolutely paranoid about getting it wrong and transitioning 1000 documents...

Example map

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE map PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Map//EN" "map.dtd">
<map>
	<title>A Grand Title</title>
	<topicmeta>
		<copyright>
			<copyryear year="2022"/>
			<copyrholder>myCompany</copyrholder>
		</copyright>
		<critdates>
			<revised modified="10/30/2022" golive="10/27/2022"/>
		</critdates>
		<prodinfo>
			<prodname>myProduct</prodname>
			<vrmlist>
				<vrm version="3.1"/>
			</vrmlist>
		</prodinfo>
		<othermeta name="docID" content="T-0256"/>
		<othermeta name="docRev" content="E"/>
	</topicmeta>
	<topicref href="concepts/Overview.dita" type="concept"/>
	<topicref href="tasks/Task1.dita" type="task"/>
	<topicref href="tasks/Task2.dita" type="task"/>
	<topicref href="tasks/Task3.dita" type="task"/>
	<topicref href="tasks/Task4.dita" type="task"/>
</map>