Lightweight DITA SC Meeting Minutes for April 3, 2017

[Keith Schengili-Roberts <keith.roberts@ixiasoft.com>]

Meeting minutes for 3 April 2017

Present: Michael Priestley, Carlos Evia, Robert Anderson, Don Day, Mark Giffin, Keith Schengili-Roberts, Alan Howser,
Regrets: Ullakaisa Kalander, Kris Eberlein

Minutes from previous meeting were approved.

==XDITA DTDs on GitHub==
- changes to XDITA DTDs on GitHub repo. See https://github.com/oasis-open/dita-lightweight/tree/master/org.oasis.xdita

Report from Carlos:
- body element is now optional
- data element is now allowed as both an inline and block element, matching what is available in full DITA
- volunteers are needed to test out fnref, specname/outputclass, primarily to establish how it should behave
- still need to make changes to outputclass, will be adding specname
- relating to fnref, @type=fn needs to be added to the xref, with the intention that you get "standard footnote behavior" with the text appearing at the bottom of the referencing page at output, and that the number appears where the xref is located; additionally, an id is required for an fnref

==Update on DITAweb status for Committee Note Review (Eberlein)==
- Kris was unable to attend the meeting, but she passed along that it should be up later today

==Keeping LwDITA Lightweight==
General discussion about rules and guidelines for keeping LwDITA separate from DITA 1.3, and how to resist scope creep that would make LwDITA less lightweight
- Carlos started off by saying that we need to be careful and not try to please everyone; LwDITA should not try to emulate full DITA in all things, otherwise it will not be lightweight
- need to state clearly how to keep Lightweight DITA lightweight so that we are not inclined to add full DITA items to LwDITA because someone requests it
- Alan asked for an articulated guideline to delineate what makes lightweight DITA lightweight

Michael suggested that we start with a set of scenarios that represents the target audience for LwDITA and use that as a basis for keeping LwDITA lightweight. He argued that we need to keep in mind those factors that have kept people/groups from adopting full DITA but who are looking for a way of creating structured and reusable content.

The main scenarios/demographics are:
- Marketing (need for specialization is expected to be more a common request with this group)
- L&T
- SME contribution (more likely to find single topic fine for their needs, more likely to use MDITA; and maybe one day, JSON)

Michael: "while you can simply constrain or not use all of the elements of full DITA, one of the ideas behind LwDITA is to trying to reduce the cognitive load for new users".

Michael suggested the need for having a "full table" is a good example of what we are aiming for; for those who want full tables, there is more of an incentive to move to full DITA.

General discussion followed as to how processing tools should handle LwDITA vs. anything novel it might encounter.

One option is: if anything is added that goes beyond LwDITA, there should be a token to indicate it as such.
"LWD-C" could be the constraint; if the "LWD" token is dropped, content is now considered by a tool to be using full DITA.

As an example, if someone decides to move to using full tables, they would need to remove the token in topic_mod.dtd in order to gain access to them in full DITA.
Carlos will produce a draft of this, will have Robert Anderson and Michael Priestly review the work.

A related question came up regarding the @href attribute: Michael believes that it is appropriate to ask if we need @href and whether things become more or less complex if it is included. From a processing standpoint, if a URL is included, the processor needs to determine whether it needs to be processed for output or not (the negative case being if it is just there for the writer's reference).

Meeting concluded at 2:01 PM EST.

Cheers!

 

-

Keith Schengili-Roberts

Market Researcher and DITA Evangelist

 

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