RE: [chairs] Re: Publication templates

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

Jon, I think Kristen points out the problem.  It is about having to reverse
engineer a template in order to determine what is essential about the
template so it can be faithfully honored when a different authoring tool is
used.

It is the difference between having code be the specification of a program,
and having a specification of the essentials by which anyone can "code" the
format.  Sort of like what OASIS does on behalf of interoperability by
having it be unnecessary to consult an implementation in order to
interoperate with it.  Here the interoperation is with the
specification-authoring, quality control, and publication process.

I suppose this one of those generational differences that Jamie has been
posting about elsewhere lately.  Back in the day, there were written
"Standards and Procedures" in organizations so that manual workers knew what
the drill was and typists knew how to layout a document, authors knew the
copy-reading markup, etc.  

Think of it like the specifications that universities provide that once had
graduate students go nutty with in getting their dissertations formatted
properly.  Now they hand around Microsoft Word templates that has someone's
life be easier and now the kids go nutty when the template gets messed up
(or adjusted automatically because their normal.dot is different) by
something they learn doesn't come out right but they can't tell why.

Somehow, throwing templates over the wall, if that is all that is done,
doesn't seem to be the right tune for the song we are singing here.

I think there is an appropriate mid-point.  Not sure how it gets done, but
there should be a style sheet that names the styles, what they are (so
someone can figure out how to engineer a template that conforms in whatever
their tool is), when and where it is used, and also what are the conditions
on page layout, headers, footers, sections, tables of content, and
appendices/annexes/indexes (to the extent allowed).  If there are
illustrations, figures, and tables, more needs to be said about what is
required.  It doesn't have to be down to the pixel, only enough to be
specific about what is essential under the understanding that silence on a
matter is permission to be creative.

But then, I am revealing my generation.


 - Dennis

Dennis E. Hamilton
------------------
NuovoDoc: Design for Document System Interoperability 
mailto:Dennis.Hamilton@acm.org | gsm:+1-206.779.9430 
http://NuovoDoc.com http://ODMA.info/dev/ http://nfoWorks.org 



-----Original Message-----
From: Jon Bosak [mailto:bosak@pinax.com] 
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 18:13
To: Bruce Nevin (bnevin)
Cc: Kristen Eberlein; Mary McRae; Norman Walsh;
members@lists.oasis-open.org; chairs@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [chairs] Re: Publication templates

OK, I get it -- this is about whether DITA should join DocBook,
Word, and ODF as an approved OASIS publishing format.  


[ ... ]


>> -----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
[ ... ]