Re: [dita] DITA goes Nuclear?

[Eliot Kimber <ekimber@reallysi.com>]

On 11/4/08 3:10 PM, "Robert D Anderson" <robander@us.ibm.com> wrote:

> So - is there anybody on the TC interested in working on a specialization
> for the nuclear industry? If so, we can set up a subcommittee to start work
> based on what has already been done. If so, please send a note briefly
> describing your interest level (observer vs active participant). If you'd
> rather not send directly to the list at this point, you can send to me and
> I'll collect responses; if you do that, please also copy Don Day, as I'll
> be offline some of the next week and want to be sure I don't miss any
> notes.

While I'm sure such a specialization is quite valuable and it's exciting to
see this type of activity happening, I worry that we are starting to set a
precedent by which every community of interest that might find DITA useful
wants to be a subcommittee.

I don't think that's either necessary or productive in the long run. DITA is
expressly designed to enable unilateral extension that does not need to be
coordinated with the base standard in order to be both reliably
interchangeable and potentially useful as a standard in its own right.

There's absolutely no reason that something like a nuclear industry
specialization couldn't be developed as a completely separate effort within
whatever standards community serves the nuclear power industry.

Just as not every application of XML needs to be a W3C standard, there's no
reason every standard application of DITA needs to be an OASIS standard,
much less an SC of the DITA TC.

Of course we should be as supportive of any such efforts as we can be--DITA
is still relatively new and it's not always obvious how to apply it
appropriately to specific use cases, but that's doesn't require a formal SC,
it only requires attention and assistance from those of us who can help.

If there are new requirements from such an effort that need to be reflected
in a revision of the DITA standard then they can be submitted through a TC
member or, if necessary, a more formal liaison can be established, but with
1.2 we should be at a place where core DITA is sufficiently complete and
general that it is unlikely there are new requirements that would require
significant change to existing features or content models, at least within
the scope of 1.x and its backward compatibility constraints.

Cheers,

Eliot
----
Eliot Kimber | Senior Solutions Architect | Really Strategies, Inc.
email:  ekimber@reallysi.com <mailto:ekimber@reallysi.com>
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