Hi Su-Laine --
In terms of what is or is not appropriate procedurally for DITA Technical Committee approval of a DITA Subcommittee (SC) document, I defer entirely to the TC Chair, the TC, and OASIS.
In terms of this proposed subcommittee publication and others in the pipeline (preceding and following), I can provide some context ... at least from my perspective. :-)
Subcommittees should seek approval from their parent TC(s) before they publish documents for at least three reasons:
1.
Sanity check -- Does this proposed publication conform to the goals of the
subcommittee? Is it appropriate?
2.
Sanity check -- Does the proposed publication offer value to the target
community? In this case our audience consists of Help authors who use
DITA as their source.
3.
Endorsement -- Does the proposed publication reflect positively on the
overall mission of the TC? Would members of the TC promote this
publication in their respective organizations?
The DITA Help SC has updated the TC on its proposed DITA 1.2 and DITA 1.3 goals and activities numerous times:
- DITA 1.2:
> Get organized
> Survey the state of DITA-authored Help
> Educate DITA users about existing solutions (this publication)
- DITA 1.3:
> Continue to educate folks about existing solutions
> Identify and develop specializations and custom processing
that would advance the feature set and usability of
DITA-authored Help.
Before your email last evening, all the feedback that I have received has been supportive of the content in the
DITA Help Technologies Guide and of approving it at our TC meeting today. There are a couple of nice-to-have production edits and nice-to-do build improvements (notably DITA 1.2 and DITA-OT1.5 M11), but otherwise what is before the TC represents the best effort of the Help Subcommittee. I continue to recommend that we discuss and approve it today.
Thanx,
Stan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Su-Laine Yeo"
To: stan@modularwriting.com, dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: dita-help@lists.oasis-open.org, sdoherty@verivue.com, "Tony Self"
Subject: RE: [dita] FOR YOUR REVIEW AND APPROVAL: DITA Help Technologies Guide
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 18:07:57 -0700
I should rephrase my earlier comment: I can see this type of document as
being valuable, but I am unconvinced that an OASIS committee should
publish this kind of document. I've read the DHSC Statement of Purpose
here:
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=dita-help and
I don't see how this draft guide fits.
Su-Laine
Su-Laine Yeo
Interaction Design Specialist
JustSystems Canada, Inc.
Office: 778-327-6356
syeo@justsystems.com
www.justsystems.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Su-Laine Yeo [mailto:su-laine.yeo@justsystems.com]
Sent: Monday, March 09, 2009 3:09 PM
To: stan@modularwriting.com; dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: dita-help@lists.oasis-open.org; sdoherty@verivue.com; Tony Self
Subject: RE: [dita] FOR YOUR REVIEW AND APPROVAL: DITA Help Technologies
Guide
Thanks Stan. I can see this type of document as being valuable, and I am
glad the Help Subcommitee took the initiative.
However, I question the value of having the DITA TC give their approval
of this document. What is "approval" by the TC intended to convey to
the public who reads the document? The TC members are not necessarily
experts in the technologies described in this guide. Much of the factual
information in the draft guide is impossible for individual DITA TC
members to test and verify for themselves in a reasonable timeframe, as
verification would depend on extensive experience with a very wide range
of technologies, some of which are expensive and some of which have not
yet been released. The guide also contains predictions along the lines
of, "Such and such a group will be using technology x in the future",
which we obviously also cannot verify.
Another thing that "approval" could mean is that the TC considers the
opinions expressed in the document, and the amount of emphasis given to
various products, to be free of bias towards particular vendors. I am
not at all convinced that this is true; the fact that some
product-specific sections are written by people who work for the product
vendor would indicate otherwise.
It's great that you've given the TC the opportunity to review this
document, however the word "approval" is problematic for me.
Best regards,
Su-Laine
Su-Laine Yeo
Interaction Design Specialist
JustSystems Canada, Inc.
Office: 778-327-6356
syeo@justsystems.com
www.justsystems.com
-----Original Message-----
From: stan@modularwriting.com [mailto:stan@modularwriting.com]
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 10:43 AM
To: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: dita-help@lists.oasis-open.org; sdoherty@verivue.com; Tony Self
Subject: [dita] FOR YOUR REVIEW AND APPROVAL: DITA Help Technologies
Guide
Hi all --
The DITA Help Subcommittee submits for your review and approval Release
1.0 of our DITA Help Technologies Guide. We appreciate that members of
the TC are swamped with DITA 1.2 specification work, but we hope that we
could get your approval of this document in two weeks time (Tuesday,
March 10). We plan to update this Guide every 3 - 4 months to keep it
current.
I have attached a PDF2 version of the document with Acrobat Reader
commenting enabled. MS HTML Help and TOCJSBIS versions are available at:
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita-help/documents.php
Check out the nifty OASIS-branded HTML that Tony Self (Help Subcommittee
chair) has integrated with his WinANT tool.
If someone with write privileges to the Adoption TC email list could
forward this email and attachment, we would appreciate it.
Thanx,
Stan Doherty
DITA Help Subcommittee, Secretary
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