Draft Minutes of the OASIS Lightweight DITA SC Meeting for 9 January 201

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Minutes of the OASIS Lightweight DITA SC

Monday, 9 January 2017

Recorded by Keith Schengili-Roberts

In attendance: Don Day, Kristen Eberlein, Carlos Evia, Mark Giffin, Tim Grantham, John Hunt, Michael Priestley, Keith Schengili-Roberts, Rahel Bailey, Birgit Strackenbrock

Minutes from previous meeting had already been approved and has been posted.

==Status of and Feedback on Committee Note==

Carlos mentioned that he had done some work on the Committee Note, with help from Kris on the element/attribute table.

Kris commented that seemingly the takeaway for some people from the previous meeting was that specialization based on templates be removed completely from the future LwDITA Specification, whereas others thought that the idea simply be removed from this draft of the Committee Note. Michael’s take on this was that we are not removing template-based specialization from a future LwDITA Specification, but that we would instead split the Committee Note into two: the first part would cover everything other than template-based specialization, with the second one addressing it specifically.

Kris believes that it is critical that the design plan be aimed at the DITA TC, who need to understand the intent, rather than the general technical documentation community. With this Michael stated that we definitely need to address specialization within the Committee Note.

The question arose as to whether we would be able to publish the Committee Note without the tool being ready, as the tool will be an important part of understanding and making use of LwDITA. Kris’ response was that since the Committee Note will focus on the rationale for LwDITA, its basic design, then its elements and attributes, this will provide the logic necessary for tool creators to work with, and that as a result the tool can follow afterwards. General agreement on this point, with Tim chiming in that tool development is also highlighting some grey areas that need to be addressed.

Resolved: The tool does not have to be delivered alongside the Committee Note.

Resolved: Template-based specialization will be incorporated into the Committee Note.

To Do: Mark, Tim and Carlos to collaborate on drafting up the section on template-based specialization.

==Status of Specialization Generation==

Michael reported that Birgit had tried out the tool and that there was a problem with how class hierarchy was addressed, but Tim believes that this can easily be fixed.

One key area of the tool that Tim requested guidance on was how to handle errors. For example, if the end user breaks the model from which it is inheriting from the base element, how should this be handled?

Tim also asked whether LwDITA has to support specializations of specializations? Michael affirmed that it is one level only for specialization, as agreed in a previous meeting (excepting the body element).

Tim believes he can resolve the majority of the issues that Birgit discovered by the time of the next meeting, but the idea of general error handling will need to be addressed.

==Discussion of How LwDITA is Formally Open to Future Formats==

Don brought up the idea of possibly addressing AsciiDoc, as it is a popular format. O'Reilly is using AsciiDoc and apparently GitHub is also considering it.

Don reported that there is enough of a correspondence between AsciiDoc and Markdown that it is not a huge leap from one to the other.

Michael noted that in the draft Committee Note that there is a plan to addresses other formats that may be addressed in future versions.

==Feedback on Mappings of Elements and Attributes Across LwDITA's Core Three Formats for the Committee Note==

Brief review of the new table that compared equivalent elements across the three targeted formats. The areas that are marked "Not applicable" are problematic.

Upon looking at the table John Hunt asked whether round-tripping is an expectation. Kris responded by saying that while this drives much of the design, we are not expecting 100% round-tripping. Carlos clarified thing by saying that full round-tripping to/from XDITA to HDITA is expected, but that we cannot promise that with MDITA. Markdown is more a way to collect content and has less of a round-tripping component.

Resolved: add conref to dl and note along with all block elements that are children of dl.

Resolved: round-tripping is not an expectation for MDITA.

To Do: everyone to review this table. Please examine the MDITA attributes and consider the round-tripping perspective for HDITA and XDITA.

Keith Schengili-Roberts

Market Researcher and DITA Evangelist

IXIASOFT

825 Querbes, Suite 200, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H2V 3X1

tel + 1 514 279-4942 / toll free + 1 877 279-4942

robertsk@ixiasoft.com / www.ixiasoft.com

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