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Subject: DITA Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 25 January 2011 (amended)


 
DITA Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 25 January 2011

Chaired by Don Day <donday@bga.com>
Minutes recorded by Bruce Nevin <bnevin@cisco.com>
 
The DITA Technical Committee met on Tuesday, 25 January 2011 at 08:00am PT for 55 minutes.
8:00-8:05 Roll call

  o Regrets: Thilo Buchholz, Deb Bissantz, Dick Hamilton
  o Quorum was established.

STANDING BUSINESS:

Approve minutes from previous business meeting:

  o http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/201101/msg00052.html (Nevin)
Moved by Don, seconded by Kris, approved by acclamation.

Subcommittee/liaison reports: 

  o OASIS DITA for Enterprise Business Documents Subcommittee [Michael Boses]
Adoption of DITA for business documents is an ongoing phenomenon. (Enumeration of a variety of industries and government entities engaging with a wide range of document types.) There's a lot of this going on. They *perceive* discrepancies between the DITA standard and their requirements. Sometimes the perception is due to misunderstanding or incomplete understanding, but there is also valid feedback for us to pay attention to. We are dealing with generalized requirements that are foundational, and are therefore of importance to other subcommittees. Our white paper, later this week, deals with aggregated authoring and structural requirements. These users express a strong need for aggregated authoring, so they're doing it however they can. We discuss the apparent approaches that have been discussed in the spec or in blogs.  This large group of adopters need guidance from the TC. We don't believe that we're asking for any changes to the standard.

Don: Is white paper the right term? It might seem to require some formality and approval. Kris: for the TC to approve it, it will have to go through the formal process. Don, Michael Boses: For now, we can deal with it as a communication to the TC. No approval is called for at this stage. Su-Laine: discuss on dita-users, with an extramural writeup of that discussion. Don: inappropriate to seem to be building consensus for a committee document outside the TC process. Kris: SC should proceed, call it a communication rather than a white paper, and then we will proceed from there. Don: there is a need for engagement with these users to understand this better; a webinar would be an excellent medium for this, if process requirements can be worked out.

Don: Simply post this communiqué to the TC alias. Kris: put PDF in the SC repository and post the URL to the alias. 

Don: This will feed into discussion of simplified DITA. We may well see some papers and best practices in the DITA 1.3 time frame.

  o OASIS DITA Pharmaceutical Content Subcommittee next

ACTION (Don): Contact the Pharma SC to alert them of their report next week.

BUSINESS:

1.  New ITEM: Question about the order in which keys are resolved

  o http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/201101/msg00057.html (Eberlein)
Kris: Need immediate clarifications answering questions that SDL developers are asking. Need to make a second pass through this section and clarify the account of the definition and bounding of keyspaces. Eliot: started drafting a paper for the Adoption TC. Kris: Can we on this TC review it? Can we put up a wiki to review that part of the spec? Eliot: want to retain IP for forthcoming book without having to write it twice. Kris: Need to separate the two, because of the urgency of the need. Bruce: Give us the first draft and let our collective efforts make it a distinct document from what you will do with it for your book. Kris: An article for the Adoption TC is a separate issue. Everyone needs to read about four topics about keys in the Processing section. 

Don: Process to drive this to good conclusion. What's our timeframe to get something approved to get to vendors? Kris: no more than two weeks. 

Eliot: If someone from SDL asks their questions on the dita-users group, I'll answer it definitively there. Understanding why people are confused is essential before we can fix this. The problem is with the definition of "map tree". Also happy to talk to any of the SDL engineers, but the spec needs to be fixed so all vendors are clear. Kris: yes, I have email from a number of other vendors as well. 

ACTION (Kris): set up wiki pages for review and revision of this part of the spec and drive this forward in our next TC meeting.

ACTION (Eliot): submit paper draft to TC as discussed. 

2.  New ITEM: DITA TC perspective re. new committee notes (web presentation today)

  o http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/201101/msg00076.html (Eberlein)
Kris sent out an advisory about this coming up. Kris: There was a lot of discussion on the chairs list in December, initiated from the DocBook TC. Process TC has invited chairs and any other intrested members to call in and participate in discussion. DITA Adoption TC is concerned that current process prohibits productive work. Don: one of the concerns of chairs is treating all TC work artifacts with the same formal and time consuming process as is required for a spec. If templates aren't provided, how can we write things that conform to templates, and so on. Don: the need for information about key information to get out immediately is an excellent case in point. Full approval process would require 45 to 60 days. Kris: if you want a work product to bear the name of the TC, it cannot go around the process--things can be authored by individual members of the TC, but cannot be TC work products. Kris: Would like to understand what history was driving these decisions by the Process TC.  Any TC member who is interested is encouraged to call in. Chris Nitchie: I can't dial in, but I agree that this is more onerous by an order of magnitude.

3.  New ITEM: Publishing Topichead

  o http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/201101/msg00070.html (Garg)
  o Would Robert provide a rollup for the group?
CLOSED

4.  Continuing ITEM: Perceptions of DITA complexity

  o http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/201101/msg00051.html (latest post on thread, Doherty)
  o DITA Perceptions (Managing Complexity)
(No comments today, ongoing.)

5.  Continuing ITEM: Review of packaging survey (Buchholz and Hackos action)

  o Survey announcement:
  o http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/201101/msg00069.html (Hackos)
(Discussion next week when JoAnn is in attendance.)

6.  On Hold ITEM: TC discussion about post-1.2 packaging

  o This might possibly be held until after the survey results are in--Don

7.  Continuing ITEM: Reports on DITA Europe (leave ongoing until talked out)

CLOSED.

8:50-8:55 Announcements/Opens
8:55 Adjourn



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