RE: [chairs] Re: Publication templates

["Bruce Nevin (bnevin)" <bnevin@cisco.com>]

Word and OpenOffice templates are fine if one is authoring with Word or OpenOffice, but they are useless if one is authoring in XML. And any committee writing documents for or about the DITA standard for obvious reasons will author DITA-structured content. Not to put too fine a point on it--but maybe this is just the point that was being missed?

	/Bruce 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kristen Eberlein [mailto:keberlein@sdl.com] 
> Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 5:59 PM
> To: Jon Bosak
> Cc: Mary McRae; Norman Walsh; members@lists.oasis-open.org; 
> chairs@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [chairs] Re: Publication templates
> 
> Jon, it's hard to write XSL transformations if you don't know 
> what the requirements are :)
> 
> Why should multiple TCs go through the work of reverse 
> engineering a Word or OpenOffice template?
> 
> I'm not raising *any* points about the look-and-feel of the 
> prescribed styles; I just want clear specifications that 
> volunteers on my TCs can code to.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Kris
> Secretary, OASIS DITA Technical Committee Charter member, 
> OASIS DITA Adoption Committee
> 
> Kristen James Eberlein l DITA Architect and Technical 
> Specialist l SDL Structured Content Technologies Division l 
> (t) + 1 (919) 682-2290 l keberlein@sdl.com
>  
> Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon Bosak [mailto:bosak@pinax.com]
> Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 5:47 PM
> To: Kristen Eberlein
> Cc: Mary McRae; Norman Walsh; members@lists.oasis-open.org; 
> chairs@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: Re: [chairs] Re: Publication templates
> 
> Kristen Eberlein wrote:
> | I find this unacceptable. The Technical Committees *must* have a 
> | proper specification about OASIS requirements for work artifacts 
> | available to them.
> |
> | Providing Microsoft Office and OpenOffice templates for TCs 
> that want 
> | to use them is nice touch, and I am glad that you and your 
> staff are 
> | able to do this work.
> |
> | But those templates *must* conform to an official OASIS document
> | -- perhaps even a specification, as Norm suggested -- that outlines 
> | the conventions (font, page size, headers, footers, etc.) 
> that OASIS 
> | work artifacts must follow.
> 
> Having now published several documents using (at one time or
> another) the Word, OpenOffice, and DocBook OASIS document 
> templates, I'm not understanding the tone of desperation 
> here.  I didn't find the preassigned paragraph formats or 
> order of presentation objectionable or difficult to work 
> with.  The visual style is clunky compared to, say, magazine 
> layouts, but it's serviceable for technical documentation.  
> The fact that the templates hadn't been through the OASIS 
> standardization process didn't make them any harder to use, 
> or (God wot) less well designed than if they'd been created 
> by a committee.
> 
> The OASIS rules say that the administration gets to make up 
> most of this.  What's the point in adding an enormous wadge 
> of procedural machinery on top of it?
> 
> What's the problem here?  Is there something in particular 
> you don't like about the formats?  What exactly is it?
> 
> Jon
> 
>