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Subject: MINUTES: DITA Help Subcommittee Meeting on 01/24/08
Hi all -- I am still figuring out how to "post" minutes officially at our DHSC OASIS web site ... and I will eventually figure it out. Until then ... here are the "unofficial" meeting minutes. Thanks to Tony for reviewing them and catching a couple of my gone-awry acronyms. Pax, Stan Doherty
==========================================================
DITA Help Subcommittee Meeting
January 24, 2008 04:00PM/EST
Stan Doherty
========================================================
Attendees: Antley, Mr. Jeff (IBM), Cunningham, Mr. Daniel (PTC), Day, Don (IBM, DITA Technical Committee), Doherty, Dr Stanley (Sun Microsystems), Fuhrer, Mr. Sebastian (IBM), Goolsby, Mr. Chris (PTC), Kirk, Bill (Astoria Software), Self, Anthony (Hyperwrite Pty. Ltd.), Sloan, Ms. Robin (PTC), Svechota, Ms. Joyce (PTC)
Tony Self, chairperson of the DITA Help Subcomittee, brought the concall meeting to order at 4:05.
1. Roundtable introductions:
a. DHSC members mentioned having worked with the
following Help environments:
- MS WinHelp
- MS HTMLHelp
- MS Vista Help / AP
- Sun JavaHelp
- EclipseHelp
- Generic HTML help
b. DHSC members have also contributed the following
technologies:
- CS Help Plug-in (cshelp1.1) to the DITA Open
Toolkit
- WinANT
- Company-specific internal specializations
- WinHelp transform for the DITA-OT
- JavaHelp transform for the DITA-OT
- XHTML transform for the DITA-OT
2. Resources and infrastructure for the committee: Tony
summarized the status of infrastructure that is now
in place or in process.
- OASIS web pages (set up)
- Concall number (set up)
- Wiki for the subcommittee (planned)
- List of URLs/links to relevant resources (planned)
3. Discussion questions about parameters: Tony
facilitated a discussion of the following topics.
This was an initial "check-in" on whether we are
approaching the issues from similar perspectives
with similar assumptions.
a. Should we be thinking about DITA as a delivery
format?
DHSC: Microsoft, for example, delivers Help in
compiled AML and relies on the run-time help
engine to handle rendering and navigation.
In terms of DITA, even XML-aware browsers are
not capable currently of rendering DITA source
into HTML without the assistance of a run-time
XSLT.
Don: The DITA-OT team has delivered some
technology in this area and identified some
long-range goals:
> The EclipseContent plug-in installs DITA source
collections in an Eclipse environment so they can
be rendered dynamically by an XSLT into HTML
for a browser.
> One vision of a DITA-aware Help engine might
involve it being aware of browser-specific or
user-specific information (preferences,
run-time platform, role) and handle the resolution
conditional conrefs. Basically, the help engine
would be conditionally filtering, rendering, and
personalizing DITA content at run-time. Companies
could deliver a single set of sources to a customer
and let the help engine handle the personalization
and/or customization in the field.
> Performance should not be a concern if:
- Server technology keeps up with network and
process loads over time
- DITA source topics remain relatively small
- Server-side processing of the dynamic content
keeps I/O thrashing to a minimum (optimizing
local bandwidth).
- Tony: Tony asked attendees whether anyone had had much
exposure to XML interface languages such as XUL or
XAML. Didn't seem that anyone had.
b. What upper-level features does Help require?
- search
- breadcrumbs (at what levels? wrapping?)
- TOC
- index
DHSC: There didn't seem to be much initial controversy
about the common top-level features in modern help
systems. Tony pointed the group to his white paper
on DITA help features to consider:
http://www.hyperwrite.com/Articles/showarticle.aspx?id=65
Tony references the features in the HAT (Help Authoring
Tool) Matrix set up by Char James-Tanny at
http://hat-matrix.com/compare_hats/.
AI/Committee: Review the white paper on features
and identify gaps.
c. What lower-level features (eg, popups, expansion
links) does Help require?
- popups
- expansion links/sections a la JavaScript divisions
in HTML or MS flavors of help
DHSC: The general sentiment here was that users
loved these features. They seemed to be good
candidates for DITA specializations, addressing
content and presentation.
d. Should we be thinking about both Help as a standalone
deliverable and embedded UA?
DHSC: Initial (but not universal) thoughts of members
trended toward focusing on standalone help primarily
and then figuring out how DITA support for embedded
UA might work on top of standalone help.
at least initially. To the extent that there is
significant variation in the way engineering groups
design, encode, and maintain embedded UA in their
GUIs, it would be prudent to gather/clarify
requirements for embedded help before moving directly
into DITA-based implementations.
- Should embedded UA be task-based Help, and standalone
be concept-based? (Ref: Mike Hughes' blog)
DHSC: Mike's argument is that improved UI design and
well-implemented, task-focused embedded UA has
diminished (to some extent) the need for the
standalone help accompanying GUIs to be primarily
task-oriented. Standalone help may well trend
toward predominantly conceptual or reference
information.
e. Are we devising a platform-agnostic (aka
cross-platform solution?
DHSC: Yes.
f. How might "Active Content" be implemented?
DHSC: Microsoft's Active Content consists of
ShowMe links embedded in help topics. When the
customer clicks one of these links, an interactive
helper app executes. There are many forms of active
content in other help implementations, e.g.
multimedia demos, tours, interactive graphics,
wizards, diagnostic applets, etc.. Calling rich
content from DITA might be as straight-forward as
some processing specializations. Metadata could
set that up.
g. Would DITA Help markup be a subset configuration
of the current DITA specification (DITA 1.2)
or some set of specializations to it?
DHSC: Everyone seemed to agree that reusing topics
that had already been written/translated for
other deliverables is a high priority for
DITA-based help. The configuration versus
specialization options will need to be an
ongoing exploration.
h. What is required of context-sensitivity for
all Help platforms (and embedded UA requirements)?
DHSC: Microsoft uses a variety of CS callback
tokens: context strings, context numbers, search
matches, index strings, or URLs. EclipseHelp uses
a unary, unique string.
AI/Committee: Validate whether these options
comprehensive as a starting place.
4. Other topics to consider (open mic).
a. Translation support: Stan suggested that we need
to have a good story about L10N support at a
minimum
- best practices
- resource files
5. WritersUA conference in Portland: Tony polled the committee
for those who were planning to attend the conference and
would be able to contribute to a discussion there about
DITA help goals and priorities. Tony is giving a
presentation on DITA-based help and can facilitate some
discussion with conference attendees. Don Day mentioned
that believed that John Hunt (IBM) was planning to
attend. Tony mentioned that he believed that Bob Doyle
was also planning to attend. Stan suggested that setting
up a concall there might draw remote participation
as well.
- Conference details at: http://www.writersua.com/ohc/
6. DHSC charter review: Tony walked through the DHSC charter
to test whether there were any elements there that
needed to be challenged or revised initially. The
committee was OK with the charter ... no issues.
7. DHSC to DITA TC (Technical Committee) interactions:
Don reiterated to the DHSC that the DITA TC was there
to assist and to support the DHSC. This takes many
- The DHSC can ask the TC periodically to review some
of its work in progress.
- The DHSC can ask the TC to assist in detailed
design work on specific issues.
- Progress reports or updates from the DHSC to the
TC are welcome and encouraged.
- Updates to the TC on overall scope, deliverables,
and timeframes assist the TC in determining how
the DHSC deliverables align with release cycles
of the DITA specification.
8. DHSC meeting logistics:
a. Meeting frequency: every two weeks to start off with
- The Thursday 04:00PM/EST slot seemed good for
folks in general; Tony has a conflict for the
next Thursday in the rotation (February 7).
b. Next meeting: Wednesday, February 6 04:00PM/EST.
c. Concall line ... OK to use the current line.
Tony thanked everyone for attending the meeting.
The meeting adjourned at 05:00PM/EST.
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