Re: [dita-lightweight-dita] SC consideration about Asciidoc vs Markdown

[Carlos Evia <cevia@vt.edu>]

Dear Don and all,

I think we could face similar, and even stronger, questions or comments from users or fans of reStructuredText and even Microsoft Word. Actually, we do have some fans of Word (Stan Doherty!) who have already asked what about format or language X (I go back to Rob Anderson's hypothetical GoofyLang).

Whatever we produce in the spec and committee docs will have a section hinting at the possibility of expanding LwDITA to other formats if there's user interest and a champion in the subcommittee. Our Markdown interest came from those sources (IBM's interest, Stan, my students, my clients... you name it, who wanted a DITA meets Markdown solution).

So, we are open and we don't say no to any formats, but we need to start from places where we feel comfortable and proficient (XML, HTML5,and Markdown as of right now).

And remember that for a while we had an idea for JDITA (JSON) that didn't make it to the first draft of LwDITA authoring formats.

Best,

Carlos

-- 

Carlos Evia, Ph.D.

Director of Professional and Technical Writing

Associate Professor of Technical Communication

Department of English

Center for Human-Computer Interaction

Virginia Tech

Blacksburg, VA 24061-0112

(540)200-8201

On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 10:37 AM, Don Day <donday@donrday.com> wrote:

Down the road, this Subcommittee is likely to be asked, What did we think about the dark horse format, Asciidoc? A key benefit is its designed allowance of metadata that has required workarounds for Markdown. A downside is that it is a relative newcomer in the field, but the growing interest in it portends its potential to overtake Markdown.

This podcast is an interesting listen for a backgrounder on the origins and trajectory of this particular lightweight markup approach. The web page has links to more info about Asciidoc itself.

http://freethegeek.fm/episode/episode-0021

I broach this as a subject line mainly for ensuring we have given it due diligence and can later point to a decision with justification.

--

Don R. Day
Founding Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee (current version: DITA 1.3)
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

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