Specialization support: a core philosophical issue

[Michael Priestley <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>]

Per today's TC meeting, summing up my
thoughts on required support for the core spec (new minimal architectural
spec plus core language spec) vs for specialization specs (new separate
docs for tech content, machine industries, etc.) vs for user specializations.

Core spec: 
- all DITA implementers need to support
the core specification and provide its documented behaviors as defaults
- we need at least three documented
users for the core spec, per OASIS requirements

Standardized specializations:
- some DITA implementers may also choose
to support the extended specifications for standardized specializations
and provide their documented behaviors as defaults, including cases where
the specialized behaviors override the core defaults
- we need at least three documented
users for each standardized specialization, or it shouldn't be considered
"baked" enough to become part of the standard

User specializations outside the standard:
- where a particular user or community
creates additional specializations beyond those in the standard, they can
expect default support based on inheritance (from either the core, or from
a standardized specialization if appropriate)
- but if they want behaviors that override
what they get by default, they will need to provide those overrides themselves
- this is pretty much the same as if
the user went with a vendor that didn't support the standardized specialization
they needed (ie they'll get inherited behavior, but not specialized behavior,
unless they develop it or someone develops it for them)

Sum: 
- everyone needs to support the core;

- specialized support (beyond core defaults)
for the specialized parts of the spec are optional but encouraged, and
should represent an established user community; 
- specialized support (beyond core defaults
or standard specialization defaults) for non-standardized user specializations
are up to the user or their partners to provide

Philosophical point:
- specialization doesn't eliminate differences
between markup languages (although it does reduce them), it provides a
framework for managing those differences

Michael Priestley
Lead IBM DITA Architect 
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25