DITA for the Web

[john_hunt@us.ibm.com]

Dear DITA Technical Committee members,

In my DITA role at IBM and in the OASIS TC, I've been tracking the various
discussions and exchanges related to DITA, structured content, and Web
2.0 with quite a bit of interest. 

At IBM, we've initiated pilot work over the past year on several fronts,
including exploring the use of DITA content in wikis, the potential for
microformats as a way to push DITA class-based semantics into XHTML, the
integration of wikis with DITA structured content, and custom assembly
and publishing of DITA content through RESTful APIs and other web services.
And I know that many others of you have pursued similar work and lines
of inquiry.

Related to all this, I've contacted a number of people in the DITA community over the past several months and received generally quite favorable inputs and interest.  Now looks like a ripe time to launch a formal "DITA for the Web" activity at OASIS.

To that end, I drafted the a set of goals and deliverables for a prospective "DITA for the Web subcommittee," for consideration and discussion by the DITA Technical Committee.

I look forward to the thoughts of the TC on this topic and discussing through the TC email list and upcoming meetings.

Thanks much.

John
___________________________________
John Hunt
Structured Content Architect / Lotus Information Development Center
IBM Software Group
john_hunt@us.ibm.com

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Draft Charter: OASIS DITA Technical Committee "DITA for the Web subcommittee"

Goals:        
1.  Provide an open forum for discussion about the use of DITA content on the Web and how DITA relates to other web technologies.
2.  Recommend strategy and guidelines to the OASIS DITA Technical Committee that promote best practices for applying DITA approaches to Web content, including:
    a. use of DITA structures, semantics, and architectures in web content and wikis, either as native DITA or as XHTML
    b. use of DITA best practices to drive metadata, linking, navigation, and management of web content
    c. use of DITA semantics to drive an XHTML microformat representation of DITA content on the web
    d. use of application programming interfaces (APIs) to drive the publication and integration of DITA content on the web with content management systems through RESTful services

Deliverables:        
1.  Recommendations to the DITA TC for specification changes or additions to better support DITA content on the Web.
2.  A specification (or a recommendation to another relevant standards body) for a standard representation of DITA semantics on web pages with  XHTML microformats.
3.  A specification (or a recommendation to another relevant standards body) for application programming interfaces (APIs) for use of DITA content on the Web.
4.  Recommendations to the DITA TC for coordination with other related standards, such as the OASIS Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) TC or  Microformats.org.
5.  A white paper summary of recommendations and best practices guidelines for use of DITA content on the Web.

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