DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 22 November 2004

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

DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 22 November 2004
=============================================================

The DocBook Technical Committee met on Monday, 22 Nov 2004 at
05:00p EST (02:00p PST, 22:00GMT, 22:00BST, 23:00CEST, 07:00JST+,
03:30a India+) for 80 minutes.


1. Roll call

   Present: Gary Cornelius, Paul Grosso,
   Nancy Harrison, Scott Hudson, Mark Johnson,
   Jirka Kosek, Larry Rowland, Bob Stayton, Norman Walsh 
   
   Regrets: Steven Cogorno, Dick Hamilton
   
   Absent: Adam Di Carlo
   
2. Accepting the corrected minutes[1] of the previous meeting.

   Accepted.

3. Next meeting: 15 December 2004.

   OK.

4. Review of the agenda.

   Mike added two new RFE's to item 11.

5. Review of open action items

   a. Mike to provide a better proposal for choicelist markup.

      Remove from action item list for now.

   b. Norm to write second draft charter.
   
      Continue.

   c. Norm to recast his example annotation implementation using the
      two element names (alt and annotation), and will
      restart a discussion on the list.

      Continue.

   d. Nancy will write up some text for accepting or
      rejecting requests, to be discussed
      at the next meeting.

      Completed.
 
6. Status of DTD version 4.4.  [2]

   No feedback from the list since the CR2 release.
   The TC decided to test it with the DocBook test suite.

ACTION: Norm to update the test suite with 4.4 features.

ACTION: Mike to write up the test suite process.

ACTION: Bob to review minutes to ensure new features are tested.

   OASIS has not yet reinstated Committee Specifications as
   an option for OASIS work.  Still pending.

7. Consider removing sections 5 and 6 from the DTD specs.
   
   For version 4.4, Norm had already edited section 5 (which
   discussed 5.0) and removed section 6 (which discussed 6.0).

8. Annotation proposal (Mike).  [1] [3] [4]
    Continued from previous meeting.

   Norm will complete his action item to update his sample site
   with the proposed elements.  Will discuss at the December meeting.

9. Accessibility.  [5] [6]
    Includes table accessibility. [7]
    Continued from previous meeting.

   Nancy asked if  table accessibility can be improved with
   new DocBook elements or attributes?  Most features can
   be provided by stylesheets. One feature that could
   not was row headers.  The CALS table spec does not provide
   markup for row headers.  Paul pointed out that DITA has
   proposed a rowhead attribute on a table element to indicate
   "firstcolumn" or "none".  

ACTION: Jirka will post this suggestion to the docbook list 
for discussion.

10. Discuss guidelines for accepting or rejecting requests.
    Continued from previous meeting.

    Nancy's email had not yet reached everyone, so this was
    postponed until the December meeting.

11. 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

      1055480 RFE: Make revnumber optional 

         The Committee acknowledged that not all revisions are made
         under a system of revision numbering.  ACCEPTED.  Too late
         for 4.4, however.

     
      1070770 Procedure in example 

         The Committee accepted the premise, but expressed concern
  about putting an element that can have a title inside
  a formal element that has a title.  Since the
  inner title is optional, it is the author's call.
  ACCEPTED.  Too late for 4.4, however.

      1070458 Allow colophon in article 

         Much discussion about the role of a colophon, and why
  it might be needed for an article, and whether any
  other markup would suffice.  The proposal was made to
  add colophon to the collection of elements that can
  appear at the end of an article.  ACCEPTED, with
  Norm abstaining.   Too late for 4.4, however.


Meeting adjourned at 6:20pm
**************************************************************

     The following RFEs are awaiting action items

      973446 Replace Footnote with Annotation 
      413389 Enhance METHODNAME and VARNAME (Norm, generic linking)
      431411 RFE 70: add generic linking capability (Norm)
      522552 Add title attribute to <ulink> element (Mike, annotations)
      565637 Associate non-inline image with link (Norm, generic linking)
      574880 Add annotation element (Mike)
      623524 (Re)Consider "choicelist" markup (Mike)

     The following RFEs are identified as V5.0 or later

      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/200410/msg00025.html
[2] http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.4CR2/
[3] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200406/msg00003.html
[4] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200406/msg00005.html
[5] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200408/msg00002.html
[6] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200408/msg00003.html
[7] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200410/msg00021.html


Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
DocBook Consulting
bobs@sagehill.net