I am going to miss the next two TC
meetings, but I don't want to hinder the resolution of items that
pertain to terminology.
I facilitated a call about terminology on 29 October, which led to two
action items:
- Gershon to propose a logical ordering
of terms, which he did the following week.
- Agenda item for the TC to discuss the
following points at a meeting:
- Concrete document type
- Do we need this term? Is it a
widely accepted term?
- How is a "Concrete document type"
different from
a "DITA document type"
- The notes in the entry for "Local
shell" are contentious
- Does the terminology apply to
entire
spec (including Lang Ref topics) or only specific topics in the spec?
I've asked Jeff Ogden to "own" the second
item in my absence.
Best,
Kris
Joann Hackos wrote:
Hi Gershon,
I’m in favor of alphabetizing the terms within each section. Any order
we select is likely to be obscure to the readers.
JoAnn
On 11/8/09 4:04 AM, "Gershon Joseph" <gerjosep@cisco.com> wrote:
Eliot and Dick, thanks for the feedback. I agree we need
to work on the section titles. I wanted to at least provide something
out the door that captures the intent, but I'm not thinking I've got
the section titles 100% accurate.
I spent some time
working on the order of the terms within each group. The current order
does assume some existing knowledge of the subject being discussed,
which we can't really get away from. I'm also thinking that sorting the
terms within each section alphabetically would probably be the best
approach. Does anyone object to me reordering the terms within each
section alphabetically?
Eliot, please let
me know when you're finished adding terms to this topic and I'll
reorder the terms and try to update the section titles based on the
input I've received to-date.
--
Gershon
From: Dick Hamilton [mailto:rlhamilton@frii.com]
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 2:51 AM
To: 'Kristen James Eberlein'; Gershon Joseph (gerjosep)
Cc: 'Eliot Kimber'; Bruce Nevin (bnevin); 'JoAnn Hackos'; stan@modularwriting.com;
'Don Day'; 'Ogden, Jeff'
Subject: RE: Attempt to group the DITA terminology into
logical sections
Overall, I think this is an
appropriate breakdown with
good high level categories. I just have a few comments:
- I agree with Eliot that the
"Content and key reference
terminology" category should have a new title, but why
not make it "Content reference and linking terminology"
so that linking is explicitly included?
- I can't always figure out the
ordering inside the
groupings. For example, the ordering under General
XML terminology is Element type, Element instance,
Attribute type, and Attribute instance. To be consistent,
the ordering under General DITA terminology should
start as DITA element type, DITA element, etc., but
instead it starts DITA element type, DITA attribute
type, etc.
In general, I see some logic in
some of the orderings,
but I suspect they are often obscure unless you already
know the relationships between the terms. I suggest that
unless there is a clear rationale to the ordering that
is obvious, or can be explained in a short sentence, an
alphabetical ordering inside groupings would be better.
Regards,
Dick Hamilton
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