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Subject: Meeting Minutes 6/15/2004 -- DITA Technical Committee
Meeting Minutes 6/15/2004 -- DITA Technical Committee *** Please see Action Items and Decision Summary at the end *** ** Agenda ** ------------ 1. Roll call 2. Review/approve minutes from 18 May http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200405/msg00034.html and 7 June http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200406/msg00017.html 3. Review yesterday's DITA Briefing 4 (specialization). The remaining sessions are: - June 21 -- Reuse and conditional processing - June 28 -- Lifecycle 4. Begin defining the titles, outlines for the initial specifications (see Michael Priestley's outline at http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200406/msg00019.html) 5. AOB? (Bruce Esrig, were you looking for comments on your notes about relationship tables?) ** Minutes ** ------------- 1. Roll call - Don took roll; yes we do have quorum - Voting members present: - Indi Liepa - Eliot Kimber - Jerry Smith - Robin Cover - Stanley Doherty - Mary McRae - Dave Schell - Paul Grosso - Michael Priestley - France Baril - JoAnn Hackos - Paul Antonov - Seraphim Larsen - Bruce Esrig - Bruce Sesnovich - Sharon Veach - Shawn Jordan (new member as of last session) - Don Day (chair) - Observers: - Eric Sirois - Prospective Members: - Mike Wethington - Rob Frankland (new member at the end of this session) 2. Review/approve minutes - 18 May -- http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200405/msg00034.html Approved. - 7 June -- http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200406/msg00017.html Approved. 3. Review yesterday's DITA Briefing 4 (specialization). - Someone said it was one of the best presentations, as far as information presented. But SameTime couldn't see what Michael was doing, so it wasn't as useful as it could have been. - Bruce: Good detail, but not enough higher-level overview to understand where he was going with the detail. - Sharon Veach from Sun -- It looked like Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), which made it easy to follow. - Michael: Yes, but there are some key differences. In OOP you have encapsulation of data and behavior in a single object; in DITA the data and behavior (format) are separated, and you have to get them to interact in a useful way. Also you don't have the same kind of "specialization" in OOP. Thus DITA borrows some concepts and methodology from OOP but there are different constraints that resulted in different design decisions. - Don Day: In regard to XSLT processing, there is no inheritance of methods, per se. To add a new behavior to an existing processing template, you have to copy the template to an override and add the new behavior to the existing code. This mimics inheritance of behaviors in methods. - Don Day: Were people able to keep up with the steps that Michael was going through? Shall we have some discussion on tools that could make this process easier? - Is there some kind of delta editor that can understand DITA specialization rules? - Shall we add this as an issue for further exploration? - Preferred naming descriptions? Are there guidelines posted anywhere? - Michael: The SIGDoc paper has some examples, but doesn't provide explicit naming conventions. - Was the briefing audio recorded? - Don: Yes, will send the info to the list. - Bruce: He would like to make a request to go beyond naming conventions, and have a formal syntax that captures the specialization structure. - Don would like this to be highlighted as important -- we should revisit this later. Let's keep it on the "Issues" list. - Shawn Jordan of BYU: Question about general extensibility. He's finding that general extensibility would be very useful -- that is, he'd like to create his own independent elements that are not necessarily descendents of the topic element. He'd like to run his ideas past someone at some point. - Don says Erik Hennum would like to discuss this with him at some point, but Erik's not here today. - Don recommends that Shawn post this to the TC list. Are we ready to bring this into the general meeting as a topic for discussion? - Michael: We didn't include that capability, because it's crossing a very important line when you cannot map back up to the topic element. This breaks the interoperability. But otherwise it sounds reasonable to Michael, and Shawn is on the right track, but it needs further discussion. - It's an urgent question for Shawn, because he is already using this variant of DITA to do a real (urgent) project. - Indi: They aren't doing it this way; they are mapping everything back to Topic. - Don: Shawn should take this situation to the list. - Bruce Esrig: Is there a need for a type-checking committee? The extensibility issues may challenge the algorithms that check that you have a valid instance. - Don: It is not within the scope of the 1.0 specification. We need to identify who the special-interest people are, who want this kind of extensibility. - The remaining briefing sessions are: - June 21 -- Reuse and conditional processing - June 28 -- Lifecycle 4. Begin defining the titles, outlines for the initial specifications (see Michael Priestley's outline at http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200406/msg00019.html) - Michael will provide a new draft that incorporates the ideas from the discussion. There will be three main specification "documents" for 1.0 -- - DITA overview - DITA markup (including items 1-3 from Michael's current draft) - DITA specialization (including items 4-6) - Don: Does anyone want to take ownership of any of these modules and help Michael write them? - France Baril -- She can help with the processing module (item 6) - Don: Let's continue this discussion next week. This will be an ongoing discussion until we complete the 1.0 spec. 5. AOB? (Bruce Esrig, were you looking for comments on your notes about relationship tables?) - We didn't get to this. 6. Next week's briefing -- Can anyone provide a "life cycle case study?" (I.e., anything where we can discuss the whole thing, from design of a system to delivery of documents to end users?). If anyone has ideas for this, please contact Michael. ** Summary of Decisions ** -------------------------- - No decisions made. ** Action Required ** --------------------- 014 Don Day -- Don will send out a list of all the remaining briefings subjects, with a specific request for people to submit questions ahead of time. 015 Don Day -- Don to post a URL to the list, pertinent to the discussion of naming conflicts and namespaces. (cf. Issue #002). 016 Don Day -- Slides for the briefings must be made available well in advance, just in case people aren't able to connect to SameTime or WebEx. 017 Shawn Jordan -- Post to the TC list his ideas about general extensibility and the creation of new elements not necessarily descended from the Topic element. 018 Michael Priestley -- Post a new draft of the initial specification outline to the TC list, incorporating the ideas from the discussion on 6/15/04. 019 All -- Discuss with Michael Priestley if you are interested in helping with any sections of the DITA specification. 020 All -- If you have a "case study" on a complete DITA system -- from system design through to implementation and actual delivery of documents to end users -- please let Michael know so this can be presented at one of the briefing sessions. ** Issues to be Resolved ** --------------------------- 001 Bruce Esrig -- How does specialization interact with maps? 002 Bruce Sesnovich -- How do we resolve name conflicts? (E.g. two people create two different specializations off the same parent topic, but give them the same name). 003 Don Day -- Let's explore tools that can make the specialization process easier (that is, help automate it -- it is simple but tedious). Maybe there are vendors who would be interested in working with us on this. 004 Bruce -- We need to go beyond naming conventions, and have a formal syntax that captures the specialization structure. <END> ___________________________________________________________ Seraphim Larsen ICG Technical Publications Sr. Technical Writer Intel Corporation (480) 552-6504 Chandler, AZ The content of this message is my personal opinion only. Although I am an employee of Intel, the statements I make here in no way represent Intel's position on the issue, nor am I authorized to speak on behalf of Intel on this matter. ___________________________________________________________
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