Hi Eliot, I understand the use case (switching between inserting a topic and a map). We could look at the extension for example and determine that a referenced file is a DITA map. I added some comments below to some things I did not understand: Eliot Kimber wrote:

One side effect of the new behavior I requested whereby the topicref insertion dialog remembers the last topicref type used is that if you insert a map reference and then insert a topicref, you'll get a mapref by default, which is never right.

Would it be possible for the insertion dialog to look at the type of the target, once it is selected, and select the first topicref that specifies a value for format that matches the target type if the currently-selected type isn't appropriate?

Are you referring to the "Element name" combo? So that based on the target file both the "Format" and the "Element name" combo could be populated with defaults?

That is, given that I last inserted a topic and I select a map, see if there are any available topicref types that specify format="ditamap" and, if so, select the first one. For DITA 1.2 there will usually be at least <mapref> in the default map shell doctype.

What do you mean by "topicref types"? I am not familiar with DITA 1.2. Does <mapref> specify some default attributes in the DTD so that it can be identified as pointing always to dita maps?

If I last inserted a map and I select a topic and the currently-select topicref type specifies format="ditamap", select either the first topicref type in the list, or more usefully, the last-used topicref-to-a-topic type.

That is, if the insertion dialog can select a good default for refs to maps and topics and remember the last type used for each type of reference, it would have the effect of making the insertion dialog select the mostly-likely-to-be-right topicref type regardless of whether I'm inserting a map or topic.

Cheers,

E.

Regards, Radu -- Radu Coravu <oXygen/> XML Editor, Schema Editor and XSLT Editor/Debugger http://www.oxygenxml.com