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Subject: RE: [dita] Use of "claims to be DITA aware": Why I Said It Like That


Hi Tony and Su-Laine,

As a employee of a vendor whose solution supports the definition you have provided below, but whose focus is on a market where the understanding of "DITA aware and specialization aware" represents a set of requirements that is closer to Tony's text, I would gently suggest that this subject is very complicated and it will take considerable work to come up with a statement that provides the value you are looking for. I think the effort is worth it, and would like to contribute where it would be helpful.

The statement in its final form below might not be seen as presenting a view of implementation that is designed to encourage approaches that meet the broadest spectrum of market requirements. I do agree that it supports the most rigid definition of a technically oriented XML editor, but I hope we all want to see the DITA user community expand well beyond the potential users of this technical type of tool. Of course the technical tools can generally be made accessible to a variety of users, but then we are back to the "contact us for a quote" mode. 

The truth is that tools are created with a specific user profile in mind, and I think we will do a disservice to DITA if we arbitrarily close the "what supports DITA" gate too tightly. On the other hand, we will do a service to both end users and DITA if we create language that helps identify the vendors who claim to support DITA simply because it has gained so much attention without any substance behind the claim.  

Very glad to see this discussion because there is a need for this.

Michael

Michael Boses
Director, XML Products
Quark Inc.

Co-Chair OASIS DITA for Enterprise Business Documents Subcommittee
http://wiki.oasis-open.org/dita/BusDocs



      



-----Original Message-----
From: Su-Laine Yeo [mailto:su-laine.yeo@justsystems.com] 
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2010 9:03 PM
To: tself@hyperwrite.com; dita
Subject: RE: [dita] Use of "claims to be DITA aware": Why I Said It Like That

Hi Tony,

Regarding differentiation between DITA-aware and specialization-aware, I
was hoping to cover that in the second sentence which says, "They must
also must also document procedures to support creating arbitrary valid
documents using arbitrary DITA specializations." Maybe this could be
clarified by saying instead, "Tools that claim to support specialization
must also document procedures for creating arbitrary valid documents
using arbitrary DITA specializations." BTW this procedure could be
"contact us for a quote."

> Would the requirement that the tool provide access to all elements and
> attributes be too restrictive for both "abstraction layer" authoring
tools
> and very specialised authoring tools (such as an authoring tool
designed for
> creating reference topics only)? 

These tools could still claim to partially support DITA authoring, which
is what they aspire to do. 
I must say though that I'm not confident that a conformance statement
can outsmart vendor marketing spin.   

Su-Laine

-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Self [mailto:tself@hyperwrite.com] 
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2010 5:07 PM
To: Su-Laine Yeo; 'dita'
Subject: RE: [dita] Use of "claims to be DITA aware": Why I Said It Like
That

Hi Su-Laine (and all)

Your revised text doesn't allow for the differentiation between
DITA-aware
and specialisation-aware. Maybe the text could be separated into two
pieces,
starting with (respectively):

"Tools that claim to support base content model DITA authoring..."
and
"Tools that claim to support specialised content model DITA
authoring..."

Would the requirement that the tool provide access to all elements and
attributes be too restrictive for both "abstraction layer" authoring
tools
and very specialised authoring tools (such as an authoring tool designed
for
creating reference topics only)? I think it *would* be too restrictive,
but
I can't immediately think of another way of expressing the conformance
requirement.

Tony Self



-----Original Message-----
From: Su-Laine Yeo [mailto:su-laine.yeo@justsystems.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, 23 February 2010 11:17 AM
To: dita; tony.self@hyperwrite.com
Subject: RE: [dita] Use of "claims to be DITA aware": Why I Said It Like
That

Here's a revised proposal with tweaks to more directly address "output
as DITA" claims:

"Tools that claim to support DITA authoring, or claim to support
producing output as DITA, must allow authors to create arbitrary valid
documents using the complete base DITA vocabulary, i.e. all DITA topic
and map types, including all base element and attribute types. They must
also must also document procedures to support creating arbitrary valid
documents using arbitrary DITA specializations. Tools that claim partial
support of DITA authoring or partial support of producing output as
DITA, but do not support creation of arbitrary valid documents using the
complete base DITA vocabulary, must document what parts of the
vocabulary are not supported."


Su-Laine


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