RE: [dita] microXML and the future of DITA

["Bruce Nevin (bnevin)" <bnevin@cisco.com>]

Sounds like you're saying that the primary interest and potential leverage is from the point of view of the XSLT standard, and that we'd want to have a voice there speaking for DITA wrt uXML.

From a superficial look around, the remaining requirement seems to be to query and transform data; an important limitation seems to be that there can be no guarantee that a compliant parser will be employed, such as:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/uxml/ 

Perhaps representative of the micro-XSD discussion:
http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/201012/msg00616.html
http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/201012/msg00693.html
http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/201012/msg00673.html

	/B 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Grosso, Paul [mailto:pgrosso@ptc.com] 
> Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 10:13 AM
> To: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [dita] microXML and the future of DITA
> 
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Don Day (LbW) [mailto:donday@learningbywrote.com]
> > Sent: Monday, 2011 January 10 0:26
> > To: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
> > Subject: [dita] microXML and the future of DITA
> > 
> > This appears to be an emerging standards discussion that will make 
> > future use of Web standards in DITA dicey if not managed reasonably:
> > 
> > http://blog.jclark.com/2010/12/microxml.html (and check the 
> follow-up 
> > post as well)
> 
> There is currently no such thing as microxml.  It's just a 
> "marketing phrase" (or perhaps more accurately a philosopical 
> direction proposed by some people) to date.
> 
> Ideas related to this concept and the relationship of XML to
> HTML5 have been discussed in the W3C XML Core WG and at 
> various levels of the W3C.  A new W3C task force has been 
> formed to look into issues related to the coordination of XML 
> and HTML5. 
> 
> There is a public mailing list for the task force, 
> public-html-xml@w3.org, with public archives at 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-xml/
> All of the task force business will be conducted in public, 
> there are no member-only mailing lists or archives. You are 
> free to join the list and participate in the discussions 
> there.  (You can subscribe by going to the archive URL given 
> above and click on "subscribe to this list".)
> 
> The chair of the task force, Norm Walsh, is co-chair with me 
> of the W3C XML Core WG as well as chair of the OASIS DocBook 
> TC.  However, to date, the apparent power brokers on the task 
> force appear to be the HTML5 folks, most of who don't seem 
> particularly interested in bending over backwards to 
> accommodate XML in general much less a given complex 
> application of XML.
> 
> > 
> > For one, it would be nice if future HTML5 editors that were also 
> > microXML compliant could actually support DITA topic authoring.
> 
> There is no such thing as microXML or microXML compliance.
> 
> If you follow the discussions, you'll probably note that 
> there is very little interest in the HTML5 community of 
> supporting what most of us think of as real XML.
> 
> HTML5 is a (proposed, though already implemented in some 
> browsers) language, not a standard for editing tools, so one 
> can't say what
> HTML5 editors would support.
> 
> The question probably comes down to what it would take to transform
> HTML5 content into DITA content (which is almost certainly 
> not something an HTML5 editor would care about).  And that 
> probably has little to do with what HTML5 turns out to be as 
> long as it turns out to be something XSLT processors can 
> read.  And that has more to do with XSLT processors than 
> HTML5.  (And for what it's worth, XSLT processors will have a 
> lot more interest in being able to read HTML5 than HTML5 
> people will have in it, so I do expect XSLT processors to 
> have modes that both read and write HTML5.)
> 
> > Likewise, it would be nice if HTML5 could evolve to support 
> a default 
> > "topic" that DITA 2.0 could live with as a common base 
> type. It would 
> > be nice if class-based extension could be retained, of course, 
> > although how we'd use that without a DTD or Schema beats 
> me--I think 
> > specialized content literally on the Web is doomed outside 
> of XML 1.0. 
> > Finally, it
> 
> Never going to happen.  HTML5 barely considers XML worth considering.
> DITA is not even a blip on their radar.
> 
> > would be nice if microXML would support a formal content reference 
> > mechanism so that conref and topicref processing ideals 
> could be used 
> > to aggregate content dynamically--I don't see anything in James's 
> > discussion that supports that use of microXML.
> 
> The point of microXML is to strip down XML to make it even 
> simpler than it already is.
> 
> DITA adopters are complaining that DITA is already too complex.
> 
> Asking microXML (whatever that turns out to be, if it turns 
> out to be anything) to add complexity to support DITA is 
> almost certainly going to be a non-starter.
> 
> > 
> > Have any of the DITA TC been party to this discussion on 
> the XML-dev 
> > list? I'm thinking that creating a liaison/intervention 
> with the W3C 
> > might be useful for the DITA TC at this point, at least so 
> that we can 
> > ensure some degree of common architecture when the DITA 2.0 effort 
> > begins. What do you think?
> 
> Anyone can join the public-html-xml@w3.org list.  (Warning, 
> there is a lot of boring email.)
> 
> I don't think DITA will have much leverage in determining HTML5.
> 
> I don't expect the relationship between HTML5 and DITA to be 
> anything much more than two markup languages on which--if 
> we're lucky--we'll be able to use XSLT processors to convert 
> between the two.
> 
> paul
> 
> > --
> > Don R. Day
> > DITA and XML Consultant, 512 244-2868
> > Co-Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee "Where is the 
> wisdom we have 
> > lost in knowledge?
> > Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
> > --T.S. Eliot
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS 
> TC that generates this mail.  Follow this link to all your 
> TCs in OASIS at:
> https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgr
> oups.php 
> 
>