flaming about feature creep: [was: Detail for bug fix item 7: Add mapref to map]

["Paul Grosso" <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

This is starting to feel more like a new feature than a bug.

 

What happened to the idea that our first deliverable was going to be

almost a rubber stamp of the existing DITA spec and then we were

going to make worthwhile changes for DITA 2.0?

 

I'm sure there are lots of great things we could improve, but then

where does it stop?  If we change the spec enough, then we won't

have the necessary implementations to make DITA 1.0 an OASIS
Standard right away.

 

Are we changing our minds from what we wrote in the charter?

Should we submit a revised charter to OASIS that redefines what

we mean by DITA 1.0 and proposes new milestone dates? 

 

Personally, I'd prefer to be much stricter now, get out DITA 1.0,

and then take our full list of "things that would be nice to change"

and define DITA 2.0 with our eyes open instead of by this nickel

and diming, let's pretend we're just fixing bugs methodology.

 

I don't mean to be difficult, but I've been here just way too many

times before (this is the result of being a standards weenie for

almost two decades), and while sometimes it's less of a disaster

than others, it never works well and it's not fair to the constituency

that approved the charter in the first place.

 

paul

---

From: Don Day [mailto:dond@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Monday, 10 January, 2005 16:51
To: DITA TC list
Subject: Re: [dita] Detail for bug fix item 7: Add mapref to map

The previous message on this thread (http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200412/msg00031.html) contained the rationale and markup examples for the #7. mapref proposal. Here are the details for the actual proposed markup.