Hi Michael,
I'm grateful for your reply. All makes sense.
Just to mention to the group chairs ... I flipped my status in
the LwDITA SC and Adoption TC from "Observer" to "Member" when I
discovered that Observers don't have posting privileges. I'll try
to increase my level of participation to reflect this change in
status. :-)
-Alan
On 2/13/17 10:26 AM, Michael Priestley
wrote:
Hi Alan,
Welcome to the subcommittee!
I think LWDITA can be both things
-
a lightweight topic definition in XML, and a standard for
creating DITA
in other formats with in some cases some smaller subset of DITA
functionality.
In fact the two are related -
among
the main drivers for LWDITA are:
- complexity of full DITA
- dislike of XML
By simplifying the topic
definition,
we make a mapping to DITA in other formats possible. If you stop
with simplified
topic, then you don't address the industries and professions
that don't
like XML (including a lot of software companies with
documentation projects
organized around SME/programmer needs).
LWDITA in XML is a subset of full
DITA
and is compatible with full DITA tool chains.
With regards to markdown
authoring,
people are already authoring markdown with varying degrees of
validation
and varying degrees of support for variable content and reuse.
What we
are trying to do is standardize the mappings to DITA where
possible, so
that for example you can have a common taxonomy used for
classification
and filtering across both formats, or a common variables file
for UI elements
or other changeable/volatile content.
Michael Priestley, Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM)
Enterprise Content Technology Strategist
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
From:
Alan Houser
<arh@groupwellesley.com>
To:
dita-lightweight-dita@lists.oasis-open.org,
dita-adoption@lists.oasis-open.org
Date:
02/13/2017 10:10 AM
Subject:
[dita-lightweight-dita]
reaction to LwDITA spec
Sent by:
<dita-lightweight-dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
I've been following LwDITA for some time. I'm
pleased
to see the recent
progress on the spec, and acknowledge that others have put a
lot of work
into it.
But ... I'm starting to see LwDITA as an effort to overload
Markdown and
HTML5 semantics to express (as much as possible) DITA
features, more
than an effort to develop a framework that will support low
barrier-to-entry DITA authoring, and "easy" interchange
between
Markdown/HTML5 and DITA.
In a vacuum, the effort to replicate DITA features in LwDITA
might be
fine. But an alternative exists today, with full availability
of DITA
features, and a reasonably small (and intuitive, IMO)
vocabulary. That
alternative is the DITA <topic> with the highlighting
domain, and
the
DITA <map>. Also available today ... full tools support.
(Gotta admit
that I shudder at the thought of validating, let alone
authoring, DITA
constructs like conrefs, filtering, and keys in Markdown).
Specializing and constraining <topic> to reflect goals
of the current
LwDITA design would be easy. Specifically, I'm thinking of
limiting
mixed content, and specializing new multimedia element types.
I may be all wet here, but I would be curious to know the
reaction of
other TC members to these observations, on this list or
in-person at
DITA North America.
-Alan
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