RE: [dita-adoption] Audiences for our best practices documents

["Grosso, Paul" <pgrosso@ptc.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: JoAnn Hackos [mailto:joann.hackos@comtech-serv.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, 2009 July 21 11:51
> To: DITA Adoption TC
> Subject: [dita-adoption] Audiences for our best practices documents
> 
> Just a reminder to everyone as you review the feature descriptions and
best
> practices.
> 
> Remember that our audience is quite broad. Here's what we say in the
charter.
> 
> "Anyone involved in the implementation of the OASIS DITA standard in
their own
> organizations, including information-development managers, content
creators
> and distributors, consultants supporting implementations, and vendors
> providing tools to support content development and distribution."
> We need content appropriate for each of these audiences, no just
writers.

Understood, we can help implementors, as well as authors, in their
adoption of DITA.

But if we are going to say something about what "processors should" do,
we have to be very careful not to step beyond what the DITA spec says
processors should do, or else we are effectively rewriting the normative
DITA spec--and doing an end run around the DITA TC--and we cannot do
that.

If we write something that causes users to go up to their tool vendors
and say "but your tool isn't DITA compliant because it doesn't comply
with something written in a DITA Adoption TC publication" when what the
tool is doing is, in fact, DITA compliant per the official DITA specs, 
then we have done a serious disservice to the cause of DITA adoption.  
I want to avoid that.

paul