Charter update -- Review

[Richard Hamilton <rlhamilton@frii.com>]

I have attached a draft update to the DocBook charter for your review,
based on our discussion at the last TC meeting.  I made the following
changes:

- Updated the schedule to include 5.0, Simplified 1.2 and The Publishers
  Schema 1.0
- Specified RelaxNG and Schematron for the normative form (but, still
  allowing for other schema languages as appropriate).
- Identified the Publisher's sub-committee and provided for potential
  other sub-committees to explore related domains.
- Removed references to EBNF, HTML, MathML, and SVG modules, since they
  are now handled separately or incorporated.
- Removed references to "exploration of DocBook V5.0," since we are
  past exploration.

I have a couple of question for you to consider:

- Should we keep Simplified? I got one yes and one no in the comments
  to my email question about this. The schedule shows a tentative date,
  but if we keep it, we should discuss what a reasonable date would be.
- Should we add web-site as a normative variant, and if so, when in
  the schedule?
- Should we add a date for 5.1, and if so, what date should we use?

Bob, can we add an agenda item to discuss this at the meeting tomorrow?

Regards,
Dick Hamilton
http://rlhamilton.net

Title: OASIS DocBook Technical Committee Charter

The charter for this TC is as follows.

Name

OASIS DocBook Technical Committee.

Statement of Purpose

Almost all computer hardware and software developed around the world needs some documentation. For the most part, this documentation has a similar structure and a large core of common idioms. The community benefits from having a standard, open, interchangeable vocabulary in which to write this documentation. DocBook has been, and will continue to be, designed to satisfy this requirement. For more than a decade, DocBook has provided a structured markup vocabulary for just this purpose.

DocBook is now widely used in both commercial and Open Source environments including Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD, GNOME, Hewlett-Packard, IBM Linux Technology Center, KDE, Linux Documentation Project, Mandriva, PHP, Red Hat, SUSE, Subversion, and Sun Microsystems, to name just a few.

The OASIS DocBook Technical Committee is chartered to develop and maintain the DocBook family of specifications and to continue to support its ever growing user base. In particular, the XML DocBook schema, a simplified authoring subset, and a variant for the publishing industry.

The normative version of the DocBook Version 5.0 schema will be delivered using the RelaxNG schema language with additional constraints specified in Schematron. The Technical Committee may support other schema languages as appropriate, and may develop additional modules and derived document types.

Scope of Work

The TC is engaged in evolving the suite of DocBook specifications. The scope of DocBook is computer hardware and software documentation. Broadly, this includes both print and online tutorial and reference documentation as well as online help, user guides, exercises and other ancillary forms of documentation.

This effort will deliver on the following goals:

• Evolve DocBook using the most appropriate schema languages.
• Address issues and enhancement requests that arise from experience with real-world DocBook implementations.
• Add support for features that were deferred from previous versions of DocBook.

Most requests for enhancement that are not motivated by a requirement in computer hardware or software documentation are considered out of scope for the committee. However, the committee may address needs in related domains through extensions or variants, and may commission sub-committees to focus on related domains. It is not a goal of the Technical Committee to expand the scope of DocBook to include additional, unrelated problem domains.

The OASIS DocBook Publishers SubCommittee develops and maintains official variants of DocBook to support the publishing industry.

List of Deliverables

The TC expects to update the DocBook family of specifications to reflect issues and enhancements adopted by the TC. Our current timeline for this evolution is:

Q4 2008

• The DocBook XML Document Type, V5.0

Q1 2009

• The DocBook Publishers Schema, V1.0
• Simplified DocBook, V1.2

Additional documents may also be produced at the Committee's discretion. The TC's intent is to pursue OASIS Standard status for major DocBook revisions.

Audience

The primary audience for the final output of this TC is structured documentation system architects, implementers, authors, publishers, and users.

Language of the TC

All business of the TC will be conducted in English.