DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 16 November 2005

["Bob Stayton" <bobs@sagehill.net>]

DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 16 November 2005
=============================================================

The DocBook Technical Committee met on Wednesday, 16 November 2005 at
05:30p EST for 60 minutes.

Agenda

1. Roll call

Present: Steve Cogorno, Gary Cornelius
Dick Hamilton, Nancy Harrison, Scott Hudson, Jirka Kosek, 
Larry Rowland, Bob Stayton, Norman Walsh

Absent: Adam Di Carlo, Paul Grosso, Mark Johnson

2. Accepted the minutes[1] of the previous meeting.

3. Next meeting: 21 December 2005

4. Review of the agenda.

5. Review of open action items

  a.  Norm to locate a meeting room at XML 2005.
      COMPLETED.
  
  b.  Norm to pursue the process of making DTD 4.5
      an OASIS standard.
      CONTINUED.
  
  c.  The Java language has added java annotations, and Norm
      wondered how these would be marked up in a synopsis.
      The C# language also has annotations, Jirka pointed out.
  
      ACTION: Norm to investigate this issue some more.
      CONTINUED.
  
  
  d.  The following RFEs are identified as V5.0 or later
  
        1097183 Allow Task as a sibling of sections 
          CONTINUED.

        1084491 Add address, orgname, orgdiv to corpauthor,
         corpcredit, etc. 
   ACTION: Nancy to email info on XML address standard xNAL.

        974285 Check floatstyle/float attributes
          CLOSED.
        958393 remove default class value from productname 
          CLOSED.
        531851 Remove inline person name elements
          CLOSED.
        532088 Remove RevHistory from qandaentry
          CLOSED.
  
      ACTION: Norm to review these for the next meeting to
      see if they are covered in 5.0.
      COMPLETED.
  

6.  MathML and SVG support in 5.0 (Jirka)

The Committee debated two choices for adding MathML and
SVG support to Docbook 5.0:
  a.  Add the elements to the schema.
  b.  Document how to incorporate them as a customization
      in their own namespaces.

The Committee decided on (b).
ACTION: Jirka to write up the customization process.

Note: NVDL will permit validating content in multiple
name spaces, and it is still under development.

7.  Testing progress for DocBook 5.

      RFE 1356238  olink xrefstyle attribute type       

ACTION: Norm to fix this bug.

      RFE 1351109  Put structfield and structname back to V5.0 

The Committee felt that these two elements were of a
class of programming language components.  It is not feasible
to include elements for all components in all languages,
so these two were seen as exceptions that should be removed,
because 5.0 permits breaking backwards compatibility.
However, the Committee felt a responsibility to document
how authors should write about such components.

ACTION: Norm to write up a description of how authors
should handle elements that have been dropped.

Equation content model is broken, currently specifies
alt or other content, not both.

ACTION: Norm to fix equation content model in 5.0.

Norm asked for the ability to add alt text to a
callout area in mediaobjectco.  The seems in keeping
with the purpose of the ubiquitous alt element,
so it was approved for 5.0.

Bob raised the issue of default attributes in 4.x,
and how the RNC syntax permits specifying such defaults
using annotations.  No decision yet.

ACTION: Bob to post a list of default attributes
in 4.x.


8. Review of Requests for Enhancement

    To browse a specific RFE, enter the URL (on one line):

      http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&;;
      group_id=21935&atid=384107&aid=XXXX

      1306027  Support for annotations in synopsis elements  

Continue.

      1328809  Add tag for easier i18n process  

The Committee suggested that this request could be
handled without adding a new element.  A list of
elements that should not be translated should
be given to the translators, for example.  Otherwise
do an XSLT transform to add such an attribute
to the copy given to the translators.  Or use
xml:lang="" to indicate no language for an element,
which would indicate that it is not to be translated.

ACTION: Bob to post a response to the submittor.

     The following RFEs are identified as V5.0 or later

(see the actions recorded above).

      1097183 Allow Task as a sibling of sections 
      1084491 Add address, orgname, orgdiv to corpauthor, corpcredit, etc. 
      974285 Check floatstyle/float attributes
      958393 remove default class value from productname 
      531851 Remove inline person name elements
      532088 Remove RevHistory from qandaentry
- ---

[1] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200510/msg00022.html

Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
DocBook Consulting
bobs@sagehill.net