dita-comment message

Subject: LW DITA specification preamble

From: "Michael Priestley" <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>
To: dita-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 17:05:38 -0400

This is what I came up with - very much a work in progress, just trying to capture some of the main value points.

<topic id="lwdita">
<title>Lightweight DITA draft specification</title>
<shortdesc>Lightweight DITA provides a specification for modular, structured, semantically
labelled and classified content that can be authored in several different formats and published
to many others. </shortdesc>
<body><section><title>Why go lightweight?</title>
<p>Lightweight DITA provides a subset of the functionality of full DITA, including a more
limited initial element set, stricter content models, and a simplified specialization
architecture for creating new content types or collection types.</p>
<p>The subset functionality has been selected to provide the greatest amount of value for the
smallest amount of effort for both tool developers and authors. The subsetting also enables
authoring of DITA in more formats: content and collections can be authored and specialized
in not only XML but also HTML5, markdown, and potentially other formats.</p>
<p>....standard so vendor independence</p>
<p>....cross-format, starting fresh, don't need full dita, require use of a non-xml authoring
format </p></section>
<section>
<title>How much does this specification cover?</title>
</section>
<p>This specification covers basic topics (modular chunks of self-describing content) and maps
(collections of content, links, or metadata values). It also describes a new template-based
specialization approach.</p>
<p>This specification does not define any specific content types or collection types beyond the
basic topic and map. However, it provides the basic building blocks for authoring, managing,
and organizing intelligent content, as well as the framework for defining any specific content
types you require.</p>
<p>The Lightweight DITA subcommittee will be publishing a series of investigations showing how
lightweight DITA can be adapted for various industry or discipline requirements and content
types. The core specification is designed to be as lightweight and portable as possible, and
so is limited to the basic topic, map, and template specifications. </p>
</body>
</topic>

Michael Priestley, Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM)
Enterprise Content Technology Strategist
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com