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Subject: Meeting Minutes 7/20/04 -- DITA Technical Committee


Meeting Minutes 7/20/2004 -- DITA Technical Committee 

*** Please see Action Items and Decision Summary at the end *** 


** Agenda ** 
------------ 
    1. Roll call 

    2. Review/approve minutes from 13 July
       http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200407/msg00020.html 

    3. Progress on remaining issues currently in discussion. All are
       close to making final decisions for 1.0: 
        - What is the business value of DITA? 
        - Conref and XInclude? 
        - Namespace for DITA? 
        - Which version of CALS table model? 

    4. Continue working on outlines for the initial specifications. 
        - Templates issue: 
        - Report from Eliot on substructure conventions? Specs we should
          emulate? 

        - Content: 
            - Guidance from Michael and JoAnne. Latest outline:
 
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200407/msg00013.html 
            - DITA Map/task map for the spec documents? 

        - Schedule: 
            - Assess a realistic target date for draft: 
            - checkpoints: assigned portions, initial draft, reviews,
              final review/handoff 

    5. AOB? 


** Minutes ** 
------------- 
    1. Roll call 
        - We do have quorum. 
        - Roll call: 
            - Members: Yas Etessam, Wendy Hambleton, Mike
              Wethington, Don Day, David Schell, Paul Antonov, JoAnn
              Hackos, Shawn Jordan, Mary McRae, Seraphim Larsen,
              Indie Liepa, Robin Cover, Rob Frankland, Sharon Veach 

            - Observers, others: David Brainard, Erik Hennum, Debbie
              Lapeyre, Tyde Richards, Eric Hixon? 

    2. Review/approve minutes from 13 July 
        - http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200407/msg00020.html

        - After review of open action items and issues, minutes
          approved. 

    3. Progress on remaining issues currently in discussion. All are
       close to making final decisions for 1.0: 
        - What is the business value of DITA? 
            - Seraphim -- It's been very valuable to see what people
              are doing. 
            - Dave Schell -- IBM can provide more information on how
              they are integrating DITA with their legacy
              documentation and the migration process. Would this be
              valuable for people to see? 
            - Seraphim, Mary McRae -- Yes! 
            - Dave Schell -- OK, IBM will pursue this further. 

        - Conref and XInclude? 
            - Key people for discussion not present, let's keep this
              on the agenda for next time. 
            - Addressing Shawn Jordan's concern, Don to contact
              principles on this discussion and drive to closure to
              a unified proposal. 

        - Namespace for DITA? 
            - Mary McRae -- Perfectly happy with an HTML namespace. 
            - Debbie Lapeyre -- Agree, namespaces don't *do*
              anything; they are just strings. 
            - Debbie again -- It *is* a string, not a URL. 
            - Don proposes to move this to next week's discussion,
              and he will take the action to get the principles to
              discuss this. 
            - Shawn Jordan -- Investigate where we should point the
              DITA namespace -- where does the URL point? Maybe to
              an OASIS page that describes what DITA does? 
            - Robin Cover suggested looking into RDDL--general
              agreement to this suggestion 

        - Which version of CALS table model? 
            - Don -- There's been lots of good discussion on the
              list. Any more to discuss? 
            - Debbie Lapeyre -- People are going away from CALS
              model towards the HTML model; but if we are going to
              adopt CALS, the OASIS Exchange model is the best
              variant. 
            - Mary McRae -- Tools can handle both CALS and HTML
              models. 
            - Eric Hixon? from BMC -- From an author's point of
              view, the CALS model is overly complex; HTML model is
              perfectly adequate. 
            - Don -- Many companies already have a lot of content in
              the CALS model. 
            - Indi -- They have some content in CALS, but could
              probably move over to HTML 
            - Rob Frankland -- The tools will handle the interface
              to the model; the model will be invisible to the
              authors. 
            - Debbie, Indi -- Agree -- Users will do WYSIWYG tables,
              and the tool will handle it. 
            - Eric Hixon? -- But there *are* many authors who want
              to see the source code and tweak it. 
            - Debbie -- The differences in functionality between
              HTML and CALS are negligible -- HTML used to be a lot
              less powerful but is now comparable. 
            - Don -- To resolve this, we need to do a thorough
              evaluation (on the TC list). Does Debbie know of any
              thorough comparisons that have been done? 
            - Debbie -- No. But it will probably come down to
              tool-vendor support. Maybe version 2.0 should support
              both models, while version 1.0 supports CALS only. 
            - Seraphim -- If we support both table models, at least
              there will be interoperability between DITA users who
              share the same table model, rather than some people
              avoiding DITA altogether simply because they don't
              like the table model. And perhaps we can develop
              methods for converting between table models. 
            - Mary -- You are going to have a conversion issue, no
              matter what. She doesn't see the value in adding
              a transformation to the table piece. (?) The longer we
              keep the legacy around, the more difficult it will be
              in the future. 
            - Seraphim -- Best decision in the long run would
              probably be to choose the best model and not worry so
              much about the conversion of legacy documentation (as
              difficult as that may be!) 
            - Don -- This obviously cannot be closed today. 
            - Don -- What is the impact on those with legacy content
              of moving from the CALS model to the HTML model? Can
              someone investigate this? 
            - (unascribed) We need to focus on the customers/users
              needs, not necessarily on vendor support. 
            - We ran out of time! Debbie Lapeyre to start
              a continuation of this discussion on the TC list. 

    4. Continue working on outlines for the initial specifications. 
        - No time to discuss this. 

    5. AOB? 
        - No time to discuss this. 


** Summary of Decisions ** 
-------------------------- 
    - No decisions made. 


** Action Required ** 
--------------------- 
    017 Shawn Jordan -- Post to the TC list his ideas about general
        extensibility and the creation of new elements not
        necessarily descended from the Topic element. Still open
        (not an immediate deliverable -- for post-1.0). 

    021 JoAnn Hackos, Michael Priestley -- Summarize the discussion
        of substitution and post to the TC list. Still pending as of
        7/20/04. 

    022 Don, Michael -- Put together a "self-study" tutorial/demo,
        as per JoAnn's comments regarding the DITA sessions. Still
        pending as of 7/20/04. 

    023 Jerry -- Post to the list regarding his group's usage of the
        OASIS OpenOffice template. Completed as of 7/20/04. 

    024 Eliot -- Find out exactly how to entitle the subsections
        within the two specifications (as "sub specification", or as
        "Part 1, part 2, etc.", or in some other way). 
            - Eliot sent email to specification support person, but
              no response back yet. (6/29/04) 
            - Also Eliot should ask if OASIS can provide any
              examples of well-written specs (in regard to content,
              not format) 

    025 Michael, JoAnn -- Work together to drill down into the
        details of the TOC of the specification and report this back
        to the TC for reaction/comment. Completed as of 7/20/04. 

    026 Michael -- See how Conref and XInclude contrast with SGML.
        Still pending as of 7/20/04. 

    027 Erik Hennum -- Wrap up his thoughts about Conref and
        XInclude and put them on the list. Still pending as of
        7/20/04. 

    028 All -- Use the mailing list to drive progress on open
        issues, especially the namespace issue. Still need to decide
        on how to format the namespace. Let's call it completed as
        of 7/20/04. 

    029 Eliot -- Wrap up the "set of namespaces" as a proposal for
        the TC to approve next week. Still pending as of 7/20/04. 

    030 All -- Contribute to Michael Priestley's posted question on
        "What is the business value of DITA?" Completed as of
        7/20/04. 

    031 Don -- Ask Eliot whether the conref/xinclude issues must be
        resolved for 1.0 or can be deferred. Don asked but hasn't
        received a response. Still pending as of 7/20/04. 

    032 Paul Grosso -- Start discussion on table models on the TC
        list -- is it possible to allow flexibility? Why/why not?
        How to handle this? Discussion has been started; thus, this
        is completed as of 7/20/04. 

    033 Don -- Ask all the owners of "Issues to be Resolved", below,
        to move the issues to the list and get them off the minutes. 

    034 Don -- Contact principles on the Conref and XInclude
        discussion and drive to closure to a unified proposal. 

    035 Don -- Contact principles on the Namespace issues -- is it
        just a string, or is it a URL? 

    036 Shawn Jordan -- Investigate where to point the DITA
        namespace -- where does the URL point? Maybe an OASIS page
        that describes what DITA does, etc. 

    037 Don -- Find someone to investigate the impact on those with
        legacy content of moving from the CALS model to the HTML
        model. 

    038 Debbie Lapeyre -- Take the table-model discussion to the
        list. 

    039 Unassigned -- Find more information comparing the CALS and
        HTML table models. 


** Issues to be Resolved ** 
--------------------------- 
    001 Bruce Esrig -- How does specialization interact with maps?
        Let's move all these issues to be discussed on the list. 

    002 Bruce Sesnovich -- How do we resolve name conflicts? (E.g.
        two people create two different specializations off the same
        parent topic, but give them the same name). Let's move all
        these issues to be discussed on the list. 

    003 Don Day -- Let's explore tools that can make the
        specialization process easier (that is, help automate it --
        it is simple but tedious). Maybe there are vendors who would
        be interested in working with us on this. Let's move all
        these issues to be discussed on the list. 

    004 Bruce -- We need to go beyond naming conventions, and have
        a formal syntax that captures the specialization structure.
        Let's move all these issues to be discussed on the list. 

<END> 

___________________________________________________________
Seraphim Larsen                  ICG Technical Publications
Sr. Technical Writer                      Intel Corporation
(480) 552-6504                                 Chandler, AZ

The content of this message is my personal opinion only. 
Although I am an employee of Intel, the statements I make 
here in no way represent Intel's position on the issue, nor 
am I authorized to speak on behalf of Intel on this matter.
___________________________________________________________




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