Re: [chairs] Re: A hosted solution for specification editing?

[Bill Parducci <bill@parducci.net>]

<abrupt shift in topic>
Apologies for further muddying the waters of this thread (albeit with the acknowledged benefit of demonstrating the frailties of email based discussion), I would like to propose that Oasis implement a forum for discussions that may be used by the TCs as well as this group. This is not the first time that a "simple" conversation has meandered, branched and ultimately lost it's ability to be followed without some sort of email-semantic reverse engineering. This is not to say the data isn't relevant or interesting, but that the format by which it is "managed" (and I use the term loosely) is abysmal when more than a few people are communicating on a subject of only a few response cycles.

This is difficult enough in "real-time" but has proven to have generated discussions that are practically impossible to decipher from the email archives.  As a result, the meta information contained in a number of thoughtful--and lengthy--discussions in our TC's past now rest primarily in human memory. Being able to not only add structure to such conversations seems worth the "cost" of having a tool like a forum available to Oasis members.
</shift>

...back to the main topic (I think the score is Duck Season 6 and Wabbit Season 8, but I am still tallying :)

b

On Apr 23, 2010, at 8:49 AM, Mary McRae wrote:

> Hi Michael,
> 
>   For starters it appears that the only browsers supported are IE and Firefox.
> 
> Mary 
> 
> 
> 
> On Apr 23, 2010, at 11:33 AM, Michael Priestley wrote:
> 
>> 
>> If OASIS provided a web/hosted solution for authoring specifications and producing various outputs, would that solve the problem of custom tooling? Would that be of interest beyond just the DITA TC? 
>> 
>> Normal users would edit the content directly, or edit in a word processor and then copy/paste into the editor. The editor would enforce common structural requirements and prevent inconsistent formatting. Expert users could take the content offline and work in the XML editor of their choice. 
>> 
>> That would give us the strengths of an XML tool chain for managing reuse, creating multiple formats, providing structural and presentational consistency. But without the weaknesses of an XML tool chain in requiring expert authors, custom tool installations, or extensive training. 
>> 
>> The question is not meant to be hypothetical - the technology exists today and is being used in similar scenarios. But we can't use it with OASIS unless they host it - otherwise we'd be storing and working with content outside of OASIS, which would break the rules. I'm willing to investigate whether we could work with OASIS to make this available for spec development, if there's broad enough interest. 
>> 
>> For a sense of the editing interface, you can take a look at an editor vendor's demo here: 
>> http://xopus.com/demo/dita   
>> This is preliminary support, so it's slow to load a topic the first time you open one with a specific type. You can add elements using the [+] dropdown. 
>> 
>> Michael Priestley, Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM)
>> Lead IBM DITA Architect 
>> mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
>> http://dita.xml.org/blog/25
>