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Subject: RE: [dita] When does DITA Document Type Not Meet Requirements?
Much of this discussion is over my head, so perhaps my comment here won't make sense. But what is preventing you from specializing the base DITA topics into "indexable" topics that include the "see" and "see also" tags that you need? And then building whatever other topics you need, on top of that? Then you'd still be in conformance with DITA. By the way, I think this is an important discussion because it gets at the core of what the TC is trying to accomplish and how DITA will actually be received and used. I don't think we need to slow down the 1.0 release for this, but it's still a very worthwhile discussion. Seraphim ___________________________________________________________ Seraphim Larsen ICG Technical Publications 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. ___________________________________________________________ -----Original Message----- From: W. Eliot Kimber [mailto:ekimber@innodata-isogen.com] Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 12:22 PM To: DITA TC list Subject: [dita] When does DITA Document Type Not Meet Requirements? The question came up on the call today as to what sort of things does DITA do or not do that make it unsuitable for some applications? I said that I didn't want to discuss that now so as not to distract us from the immediate task of getting 1.0 out, where essentially no structural changes can be made. But I will point to what I consider a typical example in the recent discussion on the DITA users list about how to mark up indexes and the current lack of support for see or see-also. All of my clients have indexing requirements that include the need for see and see-also and all have existing document types that provide that markup, all essentially the same as the DocBook index markup scheme. Without support for just that in DITA I cannot create for any of these customers a conforming DITA application that satisfies their indexing. The fact is that the current DITA document type reflects IBM's specific requirements, developed largely in response to the immediates of IBM's internal DITA users and without much consideration of more general requirements. This is perfectly appropriate for an internal-use application and is just how I would have developed it. But it is not appropriate for a system that is intended to enable wide interchange across enterprises and use cases. As soon as you move into that domain it becomes clear that DITA as provided by IBM is much too restrictive and too limited in the range of semantics it provides or enables the definition of through specialization. I've said it before but I'll say it again. DITA 1.0 provides an excellent example of how to create an XML application for doing modular, re-usable information across a wide scope of application, and as such has value to enterprises creating their own modular information systems, but it is not, in the general case, usable as-is by those organizations, for the reasons given above. That is, DITA establishes important patterns and practices that have tremendous value, but at least for my typical clients, DITA itself as an application base is not particularly useful. I think it will take quite a bit of effort to develop an architecture that is sufficiently flexible and complete so as to make it directly useful but I think it's worth trying to do it. I suspect that the result would look a lot like a synthesis of DITA and DocBook through the lens of what you need for a really productive specialization base. Cheers, Eliot -- W. Eliot Kimber Professional Services Innodata Isogen 9390 Research Blvd, #410 Austin, TX 78759 (512) 372-8122 eliot@innodata-isogen.com www.innodata-isogen.com
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