chairs message
[Date Prev]
| [Thread Prev]
| [Thread Next]
| [Date Next]
--
[Date Index]
| [Thread Index]
| [List Home]
Subject: Re: [chairs] What can Standards Development / TC Administration do to help?
- From: Michael Priestley <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>
- To: Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>
- Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:26:37 -0400
Hi Patrick,
In the case of DITA and DocBook, "common
look and feel" are primarily a matter of the right stylesheets to
produce PDF and HTML, combined with some authoring templates and guidelines.
But the authoring templates and guidelines would be specific to the underlying
standard, and the content being created will have different structural
rules and capabilities depending on the standard chosen.
For example, a DITA topic with a reused
common paragraph:
<topic id="abc">
<title>ABC
section of spec</title>
<shortdesc>The
ABC function is for blah blah</shortdesc>
<body>
<p>This is something unique to ABC</p>
<p conref="ABCrelated.dita#anothertopic/xyz"><!--this
is a reused paragraph coming from somewhere else--></p>
<p>etc.</p>
</body>
</topic>
This topic obeys the DTD or XSD rules
for a DITA topic. It uses DITA capabilities for reuse, and DITA structures
for title, short description, and content. I cannot edit it with OpenOffice.
I need to edit it with an XML editor that enforces these rules and enables
these capabilities: whether it's a native XML editor like XMetal, Arbortext,
Oxygen, etc. or a plugin-enabled Word, like Quark XML Author.
>As long as you
can output to a common model in any of those formats, how would you distinguish
your "source format?"
I don't know what this means. The "source
format" is the one you edit, and whose rules the editor enforces.
I added the example above to make this more concrete. I think ODF and other
wordprocesser-centric XML models are very different from the old-school
"separate content from presentation" formats like DITA and DocBook,
and I want to avoid confusion. The underlying capabilities and structures
are not reliably round-trippable.
>Second, with no model under discussion, it is your
assumption that the semantic and structural requirements of DITA and
>DocBook would even be relevant to the *unknown* model
for OASIS standards.
Since both are already being used to develop and publish
OASIS standards, I think their relevancy is established fact, not an assumption.
The work of mapping DocBook and DITA models to OASIS document outputs (using
stylesheets) has already been accomplished (or, in the case of DITA, is
at least nearly so).
We could also go the route of creating a valid DITA specialization
to model more closely any OASIS-specific structural requirements. DITA
specializations remain valid DITA, even when the tags have been heavily
customized for a particular use.
Michael Priestley, Senior Technical
Staff Member (STSM)
Lead IBM DITA Architect
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25
From:
| Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>
|
To:
| Michael Priestley/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA
|
Cc:
| Bob.Freund@hitachisoftware.com, bryan.s.schnabel@tektronix.com,
chairs@lists.oasis-open.org, Dave Ings/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA, mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org
|
Date:
| 04/22/2010 04:05 PM
|
Subject:
| Re: [chairs] What can Standards Development
/ TC Administration do to help? |
Michael,
On 4/22/2010 3:44 PM, Michael Priestley wrote:
Patrick wrote:
>Those are output formats. Why would we limit users to just one?
None of those are output formats. And authoring in any one of them is mutually
exclusive with the others. You can only have one source format.
As long as you can output to a common model in any of
those formats, how would you distinguish your "source format?"
OpenOffice editors may be capable of
reading ODF into memory, and then outputting to other models - but that
is not the same as authoring in that model. For example ODF allows formatting
instructions in source that deliberately have no equivalent in DocBook
or DITA. And both DITA and DocBook have semantic and structural requirements
that cannot be enforced in a general-purpose word processor.
First, I am assuming there would be a common set of features,
like part 2 of the ISO guide to authoring standards, which would control
what structure can appear in an OASIS standard.
Second, with no model under discussion, it is your assumption that the
semantic and structural requirements of DITA and DocBook would even be
relevant to the *unknown* model for OASIS standards.
If we created equivalent stylesheets
for DocBook and DITA, we should be able to get a common look and feel from
those two different source formats. To accomplish the same end in ODF would
require a different approach, I believe, using authoring templates and
guidelines rather than schema rules and stylesheets.
Not having a known model to go by, I would speculate that
authoring templates and stylesheets (which limit the users options) would
be sufficient.
I think it would be wonderful if OASIS
allowed authoring of its specifications in any of its standardized document
formats. Then TCs can make their own choice of source format based on the
capabilities they require, and produce a common look and feel that still
supports the needs of the OASIS brand.
So long as it results in a common output, I can't argue
with how a TC gets there.
But I do think that requires agreement on what that "common look and
feel" as you put it will be.
Hope you are having a great day!
Patrick
Michael Priestley, Senior Technical
Staff Member (STSM)
Lead IBM DITA Architect
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25
Bryan,
On 4/22/2010 1:17 PM, bryan.s.schnabel@tektronix.com
wrote:
Yes! I'd love it. But I can already begin to see the battle lines being
drawn, i.e., which one (DITA, Docbook, OpenDocument, . . .)?
Those are output formats. Why would we limit users to just
one?
Even though as the ODF editor I would prefer that everyone output to ODF,
I can understand why others feel equally strongly for their output formats.
The real fight would be over a uniform format. The underlying representation
that is output is a detail. An important one but still just a detail.
Personally I would welcome an activity to declare meaningful rules for
formatting OASIS standards, provided those rules were enforced.
If nothing else, it would make the main work product of our committees
have some appearance of issuing from the same organization (other than
the cover pages).
Hope you are having a great day!
Patrick
From: Mary McRae [mailto:mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org]
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2010 9:58 AM
To: Bob Freund
Cc: Dave Ings; chairs@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [chairs] What can Standards Development / TC Administration
do to help?
Agreed. How would the chairs feel about mandating all specs be created
in an OASIS XML format?
m
On Apr 22, 2010, at 12:40 PM, Bob Freund wrote:
How much of this review might be automated?
might be a lot if we had an xml publication format.
On Apr 22, 2010, at 9:24 AM, Dave Ings wrote:
+1
This would really cut down on the iterative churn that seems to frustrate
the people involved in the publication process. Great idea!
Regards, Dave Ings,
Emerging Software Standards
Email: ings@ca.ibm.com
Yahoo Messenger: dave_ings
<graycol.gif>Hanssens
Bart ---2010/04/22 09:02:30 AM---> Would you like us to review your
specifications prior to TC ballots so you don't need to go back a
From: Hanssens Bart <Bart.Hanssens@fedict.be>
To: Mary McRae <mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org>,
"chairs@lists.oasis-open.org"
<chairs@lists.oasis-open.org>
Date: 2010/04/22 09:02 AM
Subject: RE: [chairs] What can
Standards Development / TC Administration do to help?
> Would you like us to review your specifications prior to TC ballots
so you don't need to go back and fix stuff afterwards?
That would be very helpful indeed, especially for new TC's / people submitting
specifications for the first time...
Best regards
Bart
--
Patrick Durusau
patrick@durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)
--
Patrick Durusau
patrick@durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)
[Date Prev]
| [Thread Prev]
| [Thread Next]
| [Date Next]
--
[Date Index]
| [Thread Index]
| [List Home]