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Subject: MINUTES: DITA Help Subcommittee Meeting on 01/24/08
Hi all -- I am still figuring out how to "post" minutes officially at our DHSC OASIS web site ... and I will eventually figure it out. Until then ... here are the "unofficial" meeting minutes. Thanks to Tony for reviewing them and catching a couple of my gone-awry acronyms. Pax, Stan Doherty
========================================================== DITA Help Subcommittee Meeting January 24, 2008 04:00PM/EST Stan Doherty ======================================================== Attendees: Antley, Mr. Jeff (IBM), Cunningham, Mr. Daniel (PTC), Day, Don (IBM, DITA Technical Committee), Doherty, Dr Stanley (Sun Microsystems), Fuhrer, Mr. Sebastian (IBM), Goolsby, Mr. Chris (PTC), Kirk, Bill (Astoria Software), Self, Anthony (Hyperwrite Pty. Ltd.), Sloan, Ms. Robin (PTC), Svechota, Ms. Joyce (PTC) Tony Self, chairperson of the DITA Help Subcomittee, brought the concall meeting to order at 4:05. 1. Roundtable introductions: a. DHSC members mentioned having worked with the following Help environments: - MS WinHelp - MS HTMLHelp - MS Vista Help / AP - Sun JavaHelp - EclipseHelp - Generic HTML help b. DHSC members have also contributed the following technologies: - CS Help Plug-in (cshelp1.1) to the DITA Open Toolkit - WinANT - Company-specific internal specializations - WinHelp transform for the DITA-OT - JavaHelp transform for the DITA-OT - XHTML transform for the DITA-OT 2. Resources and infrastructure for the committee: Tony summarized the status of infrastructure that is now in place or in process. - OASIS web pages (set up) - Concall number (set up) - Wiki for the subcommittee (planned) - List of URLs/links to relevant resources (planned) 3. Discussion questions about parameters: Tony facilitated a discussion of the following topics. This was an initial "check-in" on whether we are approaching the issues from similar perspectives with similar assumptions. a. Should we be thinking about DITA as a delivery format? DHSC: Microsoft, for example, delivers Help in compiled AML and relies on the run-time help engine to handle rendering and navigation. In terms of DITA, even XML-aware browsers are not capable currently of rendering DITA source into HTML without the assistance of a run-time XSLT. Don: The DITA-OT team has delivered some technology in this area and identified some long-range goals: > The EclipseContent plug-in installs DITA source collections in an Eclipse environment so they can be rendered dynamically by an XSLT into HTML for a browser. > One vision of a DITA-aware Help engine might involve it being aware of browser-specific or user-specific information (preferences, run-time platform, role) and handle the resolution conditional conrefs. Basically, the help engine would be conditionally filtering, rendering, and personalizing DITA content at run-time. Companies could deliver a single set of sources to a customer and let the help engine handle the personalization and/or customization in the field. > Performance should not be a concern if: - Server technology keeps up with network and process loads over time - DITA source topics remain relatively small - Server-side processing of the dynamic content keeps I/O thrashing to a minimum (optimizing local bandwidth). - Tony: Tony asked attendees whether anyone had had much exposure to XML interface languages such as XUL or XAML. Didn't seem that anyone had. b. What upper-level features does Help require? - search - breadcrumbs (at what levels? wrapping?) - TOC - index DHSC: There didn't seem to be much initial controversy about the common top-level features in modern help systems. Tony pointed the group to his white paper on DITA help features to consider: http://www.hyperwrite.com/Articles/showarticle.aspx?id=65 Tony references the features in the HAT (Help Authoring Tool) Matrix set up by Char James-Tanny at http://hat-matrix.com/compare_hats/. AI/Committee: Review the white paper on features and identify gaps. c. What lower-level features (eg, popups, expansion links) does Help require? - popups - expansion links/sections a la JavaScript divisions in HTML or MS flavors of help DHSC: The general sentiment here was that users loved these features. They seemed to be good candidates for DITA specializations, addressing content and presentation. d. Should we be thinking about both Help as a standalone deliverable and embedded UA? DHSC: Initial (but not universal) thoughts of members trended toward focusing on standalone help primarily and then figuring out how DITA support for embedded UA might work on top of standalone help. at least initially. To the extent that there is significant variation in the way engineering groups design, encode, and maintain embedded UA in their GUIs, it would be prudent to gather/clarify requirements for embedded help before moving directly into DITA-based implementations. - Should embedded UA be task-based Help, and standalone be concept-based? (Ref: Mike Hughes' blog) DHSC: Mike's argument is that improved UI design and well-implemented, task-focused embedded UA has diminished (to some extent) the need for the standalone help accompanying GUIs to be primarily task-oriented. Standalone help may well trend toward predominantly conceptual or reference information. e. Are we devising a platform-agnostic (aka cross-platform solution? DHSC: Yes. f. How might "Active Content" be implemented? DHSC: Microsoft's Active Content consists of ShowMe links embedded in help topics. When the customer clicks one of these links, an interactive helper app executes. There are many forms of active content in other help implementations, e.g. multimedia demos, tours, interactive graphics, wizards, diagnostic applets, etc.. Calling rich content from DITA might be as straight-forward as some processing specializations. Metadata could set that up. g. Would DITA Help markup be a subset configuration of the current DITA specification (DITA 1.2) or some set of specializations to it? DHSC: Everyone seemed to agree that reusing topics that had already been written/translated for other deliverables is a high priority for DITA-based help. The configuration versus specialization options will need to be an ongoing exploration. h. What is required of context-sensitivity for all Help platforms (and embedded UA requirements)? DHSC: Microsoft uses a variety of CS callback tokens: context strings, context numbers, search matches, index strings, or URLs. EclipseHelp uses a unary, unique string. AI/Committee: Validate whether these options comprehensive as a starting place. 4. Other topics to consider (open mic). a. Translation support: Stan suggested that we need to have a good story about L10N support at a minimum - best practices - resource files 5. WritersUA conference in Portland: Tony polled the committee for those who were planning to attend the conference and would be able to contribute to a discussion there about DITA help goals and priorities. Tony is giving a presentation on DITA-based help and can facilitate some discussion with conference attendees. Don Day mentioned that believed that John Hunt (IBM) was planning to attend. Tony mentioned that he believed that Bob Doyle was also planning to attend. Stan suggested that setting up a concall there might draw remote participation as well. - Conference details at: http://www.writersua.com/ohc/ 6. DHSC charter review: Tony walked through the DHSC charter to test whether there were any elements there that needed to be challenged or revised initially. The committee was OK with the charter ... no issues. 7. DHSC to DITA TC (Technical Committee) interactions: Don reiterated to the DHSC that the DITA TC was there to assist and to support the DHSC. This takes many - The DHSC can ask the TC periodically to review some of its work in progress. - The DHSC can ask the TC to assist in detailed design work on specific issues. - Progress reports or updates from the DHSC to the TC are welcome and encouraged. - Updates to the TC on overall scope, deliverables, and timeframes assist the TC in determining how the DHSC deliverables align with release cycles of the DITA specification. 8. DHSC meeting logistics: a. Meeting frequency: every two weeks to start off with - The Thursday 04:00PM/EST slot seemed good for folks in general; Tony has a conflict for the next Thursday in the rotation (February 7). b. Next meeting: Wednesday, February 6 04:00PM/EST. c. Concall line ... OK to use the current line. Tony thanked everyone for attending the meeting. The meeting adjourned at 05:00PM/EST.
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