Organization of the DITA Specification

[Robert D Anderson <robander@us.ibm.com>]

Hi - I intended to send this out last Friday, but am just now getting to it
- so it will sound a bit rushed.

The TC needs to put a small amount of thought into how the Specifications,
including DTDs and Schemas, will be distributed with DITA 1.2.

There are now a couple of industry specific packages, with more to come in
the future. Should these be bundled with the core? If in separate packages,
should they include pre-requisite portions of the core, or must users
download more than one package? What exactly is the core?

For example - how should one be able to access the machine industry
specializations? It uses the task specialization, which (so far) is one of
the core information types. So, would a Machine Industry bundle also
include the task DTD and Schema modules, or the task specification?

Is there still a reason to have one large bundle with all of the DITA
specifications in a single zip? I wonder if - in the future - it will be
useful for a single user or implementer to grab every industry bundle at
once.

Anyway - this is just a rather rushed way to bring up the topic. If we have
time at tomorrow's call, we can discuss it in more detail. If there are no
opinions from the rest of the TC, then those working on the spec will be
forced to decide before too long.

Thanks -

Robert D Anderson
IBM Authoring Tools Development
Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit
(507) 253-8787, T/L 553-8787 (Good Monday & Thursday)