As some of you know, I have been moving away from the whole LwDITA idea, as I believe DITA complexity should be tackled with more sophisticated tools (especially for DITA configuration and constraints), rather than dumbing down the standard. This caused my involvement in the committee and my attention to the discussions of the draft to lapse. This also implies that I have no useful comments about the LwDITA standard(s) as proposed.
However, there is one section in the draft that I am absolutely and vehemently opposed to (and should probably have pointed out earlier): 6. LwDITA Tools.
As this is an official OASIS Committee Note, there should NOT be ANY mention of ANY tools that supposedly support this standard today.
Two reasons:
OASIS should not even give the impression of endorsing any tool, commercial or non-commercial, as this will always give unfair advantage over the tools that are mentioned over the ones that the committee may not (yet) know or care about. OASIS is about the standard, not about the tools that do or do not support that standard.
Another reason is the short lifespan of this section compared to the long lifespan expectancy of the Committee Note itself. Any list of tools that supposedly support the LwDITA standard(s) today is bound to be outdated within a very short time, whereas a Committee Note has a tendency to be reference material with a much longer lifespan (i.e. at least until the LwDITA standard is officially released).
Let’s keep the committee work confined to the standard (as has been the case for anything related to the DITA standard).
Jang F.M. Graat
Smart Information Design
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Cell: +31 646 854 996
