Okay, that makes some sense, Gershon.
Perhaps this could be acknowledged in the presentation, though - for
example by splitting the documents up into "best practices in general"
and "best practices for DITA in particular."
That way those who are familiar with the general cases can just look at
the DITA specific stuff.
--Dana
Gershon L Joseph wrote:
Hi Dana,
Thanks for raising this issue.
We discussed this exact issue at length on
the translation subcommittee, and concluded that if we only address the
DITA-specific issues, the best practice documents would not be useful
to our target readers. In fact, they would most likely be useless to
the general public they're aimed at. Therefore, we ensured they cover
everything a reader who is not yet knowledgeable in these translation
aspects will benefit from the best practice documents. The fact that a
large part of the information applies equally to other DTDs is a
byproduct of DITA being an XML DTD. Our target audience are users who
are possibly new to XML, most likely new to XML-based documentation,
and definitely unfamiliar with the process of translating XML-based
documentation.
Best Regards,
Gershon
Okay, I've taken a look at both these translation
best practices documents now, and I have a high level observation and
related questions.
Both would seem to apply to any XML DTD for the most part, not DITA
specifically - maybe 90% is generic, 10% DITA specific.
Do we really want to put out TC documents that apply so broadly? Or
should we tighten them up to just discuss the peculiarities of DITA
with respect to these issues?
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