Minutes of Lightweight DITA Subcommittee--kickoff meeting 15 Sept 2014

["Don R. Day" <donday@donrday.com>]

Attached are minutes I recorded of today's meeting. Note the provided links and the closing suggestions for prep for the next meeting (in two weeks, same time).

--

• Don R. Day
• Co-Founder, ContelligenceGroup.com
• Founding Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
• LinkedIn: donrday   Twitter: @donrday
• About.me: Don R. Day   Skype: don.r.day

• "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
• Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
• --T.S. Eliot

Minutes of Lightweight DITA Subcommittee--kickoff meeting 15 Sept 2014
taken by Don Day

Michael took roll
(Don's list: Mark Giffin, Tim Grantham, Stan Doherty, Kris Eberlein, Tom Comerford, Chris Nitchie, Mark Poston, Adran Warman, Michael Priestley, Don Day, Joe Pairman)

Michael started off with a presentation overview of the project's design points.
(NOTE: the minutes are not reiterating content that is in the slides; trying to capture his add-on commentary)
From a last year's presentation (ended by more recent slides):
	[Was apparently one of these; Michael will be providing links as well.]
	http://www.slideshare.net/mpriestley/lw-dita20130424
	http://www.slideshare.net/mpriestley/a-lightweight-dita-update
 * Goal to accomodate a common architecture, a lighter weight starting point that can be customized as needed by any community.
   [Note from Don: hearing variant terminology that we'll need to define and manage our messages around: "extend" vs "specialize" vs "customize" vs "subset" etc.]
 * Reviewed some common scenarios: contribution, collaboration, adoption, etc..
 * IBM perspective is to have it as a standard portable format across the enterprise (any source, any channel).
 * Reviewed analysis of initial design: indeed a lighter cognitive load for users (Don doubts the architecture is eased much!).
 * Note that Information Mapping has never come through on IP contribution, so that is currently out of scope.
 * To make the architecture lighter as well, the DTD base is actually a subset (not a constraint using the full current DTDs).
 * Deeper dive:
   * Michael noted that we are learning more by use about necessary base content (eg, relaxation of prolog constraints).
   * Titles in topicrefs are a work in progress--new version needs testing.
   * Mentioned increased interest in learning and training types for commonly used content.
   * Why lightweight DITA?
   * Goal to increase size of DITA ecosystem within a company; benefits everybody (users and vendors).

2nd presentation: Does DITA need XML? (http://www.slideshare.net/mpriestley/does-dita-need-xml-lightweight-dita-and-html5)
 * Adrian mentioned a markdown trend toward CommonMark that we need to watch.
 * Joe Pairman mentioned that the goal is for something more specified than the original daringfireballs site.
 * Mark Giffin mentioned Oreilly Atlas (asciidoc), a more booklike approach.

Open for discussion:
 * Nitchie: is DITA 1.3 a reasonable target for interchange? Michael suggested some 
 * Jang: interop between full and lw dita: is it feasible to have non-disruptive mapping from one version to another? (ie, hide markup within the editor)
 * Michael viewed that scenario as different from the value proposition in LWD: enabling different tools to be deployed.
 * Kris foresees other common tools like Outlook being able to support LWD under the hood.
 * Kris noted how googledoc can save as ODF; could it save as LWD someday.
 * Don added notion of weight and directness of content as a hindrance.
 * Michael added more concerns about roundtripping. Take to list.

Kris suggested looking into future meetings. 
 * Michael Is biweekly okay? yes. This time? yes, (except for Stan)
 * We have a plan. Look at Michael's list of deliverables (https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita-lightweight-dita/201409/msg00004.html).
 * [Note from Don: OASIS subcommittee expectations: https://www.oasis-open.org/policies-guidelines/tc-process#subcommittees]
 * What is your interest in LWD? Motivating use cases?
 * Kris suggest that Michael use email to kick this off.

Related lists for public discussion:
dita.xml.org - http://dita.xml.org/blog/lightweight-dita
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Lightweight-DITA-4943862
Yahoo - http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/lightweight-DITA (not working when tested just now)


Adjourned at 12 Eastern.