Fw: [dita] Groups - Proposal 12008 - vocabulary and integration constraints(HTML) (IssueConstraints12008.html) uploaded

[Michael Priestley <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>]

PS: I am absolutely in sympathy with
your drive to keep DITA simple, and I agree that any feature has to be
in or not based on a cost-benefit analysis, with any extra complexity for
specializers definitely landing in the cost column. 

If there's a way to simplify the proposal
I'm eager to find it - but I do think the proposal has considerable usefulness,
and do think the current benefits do outweigh the costs.

Michael Priestley
Lead IBM DITA Architect 
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25
----- Forwarded by Michael
Priestley/Toronto/IBM on 08/21/2007 09:56 PM -----

Michael Priestley/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA

08/21/2007 03:44 PM

To	"Grosso, Paul" <pgrosso@ptc.com>
cc	dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject	RE: [dita] Groups - Proposal 12008 - vocabulary and integration constraints (HTML) (IssueConstraints12008.html) uploaded

So I can better understand your position: 

- are you advocating that specializers should simply be unable to eg make
shortdesc required without specialization, or replace generic elements
with more specialized ones, or include only some elements from a domain?

- or are you advocating that they should be able to, and we simply accept
that constraints will not be recognized by conref or other dita-aware processes,
so if group A imposes a constraint on their own content there is no way
for them to check whether that same constraint has been applied to the
content they want to reuse without human intervention?

Michael Priestley
Lead IBM DITA Architect 
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25

"Grosso, Paul" <pgrosso@ptc.com>

08/21/2007 03:26 PM

To	<dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
cc
Subject	RE: [dita] Groups - Proposal 12008 - vocabulary and integration constraints (HTML) (IssueConstraints12008.html) uploaded

                From: Michael Priestley
[mailto:mpriestl@ca.ibm.com] 
                Sent: Tuesday,
2007 August 21 14:02
                To: Eliot Kimber
                Cc: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
                Subject: RE: [dita]
Groups - Proposal 12008 - vocabulary and
integration constraints (HTML) (IssueConstraints12008.html) uploaded
                
                I think this is
exactly parallel to the domains attribute, 
                and serves a parallel
purpose - communicating constraints  
                for those processes
that care. We've established previously  
                that you generally
don't care, but that others do :-) 
                
                We can have yet
again the argument about how or why some  
                companies want
to compare constraints when reusing (ie I  
                want to know if
you're allowing things that will blow up  
                my processor).
But we got nowhere last time. 

________________________________

Fair enough.  So how are we going to get anywhere this time?

Do we just let anyone add any amount of complexity to
the DITA spec because someone thinks it's useful to
some audience (almost anything is going to be [at least
perceived to be] useful to someone in some circumstance)?

Or are we willing to say, some people care about some
things and others don't, but we all care about avoiding
making the DITA standard so complex that it buckles under
its own weight, so we all need to evaluate the cost-benefit
of each proposal, and some of us are going to decide the
cost of added complexity is not worth the benefit *as we
perceive it*, so it is perfectly acceptable to vote against
a given proposal on such grounds?

I fear the road we're on is going to make SGML, HyTime, 
DSSSL, FOSI, XML Schema, and XSL-FO all look simple in 
comparison (yes, I've worked on all those specs and maybe
it's because I have the scars to prove it that I'm trying
to keep DITA from following in the same path).

paul