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Subject: Re: [dita-help] complexity


Hi --
 
I agree with your assessment, Joann. If DITA initiates receive the impression that they will need to know a significant percentage of the DITA spec to do their jobs, they glaze over and often walk away (drop the course). If I provide then with the following, they seem to calm down and stay on board:
 
1. Some reassurance that "basic" DITA proficiency involves only a small percentage of the
    complete DITA specification.
 
2. Some short-term learning path . . . eating the proverbial elephant one spoonful at a time.
 
That said, I found that some percentage (25%-ish) of my DITA students never "get it" -- no matter what you present or how you present it. I suspect that "complexity" is a codeword for other issues.
 
Stan
 
 
Stan Doherty
Director, Technical Publications
Verivue Inc.
Westford MA
sdoherty@verivue.com
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: "Joann Hackos" [joann.hackos@comtech-serv.com]
Date: 12/06/2010 12:03 PM
To: "Bruce Nevin (bnevin)" <bnevin@cisco.com>, dita-help@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [dita-help] complexity

We want to introduce this topic for the next Adoption TC meeting. Please count on joining the meeting. Perhaps we should ask users for their thoughts on this issue. When you teach DITA, you can easily see how overwhelmed people seem to be. However, if they were learning desktop publishing from scratch, they might react in the same one.
JoAnn


On 12/6/10 9:51 AM, "Bruce Nevin (bnevin)" <bnevin@cisco.com> wrote:

What is the basis of the perception of complexity?


 

From: ian balanza-davis  [mailto:ibalanza_davis@yahoo.co.uk]
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010  10:34 AM
To: Goolsby, Chris; tself@hyperwrite.com;  dita-help@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [dita-help] Help  Features in DITA 1.3

 
 

Greetings all

I would concur that the context hooks should be  built into the core content model, but I think we would need to be mindful of  the scope of the hooks to ensure some form of uniqueness in the final output.  

I am not so sure about the window definitions. To me these feel more  like a processing requirement, and I am not sure that it is good practice to  place format-specific information in the source. (Pretending "print" does not  exist on topicrefs...)

I agree that the standard is looking complex,  and I suspect can only get more so.

As an aside, I work with SMEs  rather than (classically-defined) authors who found version 1.1 complex. You  can imagine how they will react to 1.2

Ian
 

 


From: "Goolsby, Chris"  <cgoolsby@ptc.com>
To:  tself@hyperwrite.com; dita-help@lists.oasis-open.org
Sent: Mon, 6 December, 2010  14:46:47
Subject: RE:  [dita-help] Help Features in DITA 1.3

Hi all.

I agree.  The base topic types work fine for UA. We just need to tweak a
few things  to add some hooks for UA delivery. I agree with the community
that DITA is  getting a little complex.

Regards.

Chris  Goolsby
PTC


-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Self  [mailto:tself@hyperwrite.com]
Sent:  Monday, December 06, 2010 1:33 AM
To: dita-help@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject:  [dita-help] Help Features in DITA 1.3

Greetings colleagues

Now  that 1.2 has been released, we have to start thinking about 1.3. You
will  probably recall that the Help Subcommittee was established to  make
recommendations for 1.3; it wasn't anticipated that 1.3 would be so  far
away.

So far, we have proposals for spec changes to better  handle context
hooks,
and window definitions.

We have discussed  in the past the possibility of a specialisation for
integrated or embedded  user assistance content.

There has been some negative feedback from the  community about the
perceived
complexity of 1.2, with new information  types, constrained versions of
some
types, and a (perceived) mushrooming  in the number of elements.

My feeling is that the context hook and  window definitions should be
built
into the base content model. My  feeling is that we should not have a
specialised information type for UA,  mainly because I don't think the
community is demanding such a  thing.

What do you all think?

Tony  Self



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