DITA TechComm SC Meeting Minutes: 03-17-2014

["Dr. Stanley Doherty" <stan@modularwriting.com>]

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           DITA Tech Comm Subcommittee
               March 17, 2014
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Attendees: 
- Jennifer Allen,
- Tom Cihak,
- Jane Credland, 
- Stan Doherty, 
- Dave Helfinstine, 
- Bob Thomas

Regrets: JoAnn Hackos

0. Action Items
   - AI/Stan: Set up a SurveyMonkey site re: meeting times
   - AI/Stan: Contact OASIS about wiki access permissions
   - AI/Stan: Touch base with JoAnn (cc: Bob) about
     the review status of Bob's Troubleshooting whitepaper
   - AI/Bob and Jane: Explore regulatory info models
   - AI/Stan: Touch base with JoAnn re: contact for 
     semiconductor PLC info models
   - AI/Stan: Research agile/scrum documentation standards
   - AI/Stan: Contact Michael Priestley about joining a
     future SC meeting to discuss simplified DITA 
     strategies.

1. SC Meeting Time
   - The SC discussed whether it would be more reasonable to 
     schedule SC meetings later on Mondays. There are
     currently no participants dialing in from Europe,
     so optimizing the meeting time for Europe or for
     the East Coast is not compelling.
   - AI/Stan: Set up a SurveyMonkey site this week to 
     collect feedback from SC members on alternate 
     (later) Monday meeting times.
     > https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GM9NKJQ

2. Wiki site updates
   - Stan reported that he is not able to update the 
     wiki with our current plans. 
   - AI/Stan - contact OASIS again to troubleshoot access
     issues

3. DITA 1.3 TC Open Issues

   a. SVG / MathML Domain:
      - The SC discussed the proposal that the SVG/MathML
        support features being introduced in DITA 1.3 be
        bundled with the rest of TechComm.
      - No objections.

   b. Release Management
      - Tom noted that integrating the DITA 1.3 release 
        management metadata with BOTH topic and maps
        had been the proposed goal all along. 
      - Neither Tom nor the SC had issues with Eliot
        Kimber's update to add support for maps.

   c. Troubleshooting
      - Bob noted that most of the DITA 1.3 spec Review-1 
        feedback on Troubleshooting had been minor. 
        Devoting significant time to the proposals 
        BEFORE TC approval paid off in this spec
        review period. 
      - Stan mentioned that he had used the pre-release 
        version of the Troubleshooting topic now
        bundled with Oxygen 15.2. Very nice. 

4. DITA Adoption Open Issues
  
   a. Troubleshooting whitepaper draft
      - Bob noted that he had not heard back from 
        the Adoption TC re: the draft whitepaper
        submitted for review a few weeks back.
      - AI/Stan - touch base with JoAnn (cc: Bob)

   b. Release Management
      - Tom noted that he planned to start work on
        his whitepaper.

5. 2014 Information Modeling Projects

   a. Regulatory / Policy writing
      - Examples: HR policies, corporate guidelines
      - AI/Bob and Jane to explore and report back

   b. Semiconductor industry PLC
      - AI/Stan - touch base with JoAnn re: whether
        she has a contact who we can draft for this.

   c. Agile/scrum process documentation
      - AI/Stan to research and report back

6. Lightweight DITA
   - The SC had a lively discussion about efforts to 
     simplify DITA at both the authoring level and at
     the specialization/processing level. Michael 
     Priestley's proposal for Lightweight DITA seemed to
     focus on the latter. SC members were somewhat more
     interested in the former. If Michael's proposals 
     will have less impact on authoring complexity 
     than on specialization/processing complexity, we
     should understand that better.
   - The SC formulated its goal: The DITA authoring 
     community wants a simplified authoring environment
     without a corresponding change in current semantic
     markup. 
     > Example: a constrained <section> block would have
       significant impact of author perceptions of DITA
       complexity. 
   - AI/Stan - Email Michael re: joining us some day
     for a general discussion on strategy.

7. RelaxNG
   - Bob suggested to the SC that RelaxNG support in
     DITA 1.3 was potentially a game-changer with 
     regards to generating constrained DTDs from
     RelaxNG schemas.
   - Need to learn more about RelaxNG.


8. Next meeting:
   - Monday, March 31 -- 04:30PM/EST