RE: [dita] problem with packaging of glossaries

["Ogden, Jeff" <jogden@ptc.com>]

Isn’t what we ended up with was just “convenience” packaging. The real OASIS standard includes everything and there is an “everything” package.

 

I don’t think that it is possible to come up with any one set of packages that will meet all needs. Some use will require multiple prerequisite or “base” packages (base+Technical Content in this case).

 

The idea behind convenience packaging was to break things down into smaller more understandable and more manageable groupings of related files that would be convenient for many users. But we understood that there will be dependencies between packages and that some existing and some new specializations will require multiple prerequisite packages. Or some organizations may choose to repackage the material as it comes from OASIS into new packages of their own that work better for their purposes or with their specializations.

 

Given this I don’t see a need to move glossentry.  And I certainly don’t want to move concept, reference, and task.  If you move them all,  what is left in the Technical Communication package?

 

    -Jeff

 

From: Bruce Nevin (bnevin) [mailto:bnevin@cisco.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 2:53 PM
To: rob@ascan.ca; DITA TC
Subject: RE: [dita] problem with packaging of glossaries

 

Rob,

 

I may be misusing the word package.  There is a grouping of TechDocs-specific parts of DITA in 1.2 and that is what I am referring to.

 

    /B

 

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From: Rob Hanna [mailto:rob@ascan.ca]
Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 2:09 PM
To: Bruce Nevin (bnevin); 'DITA TC'
Subject: RE: [dita] problem with packaging of glossaries

Good day, Bruce.

 

I think I am a little confused by what is being proposed. The concept of “packages” is not crystal clear to me. Why can packages not share common information types? Surely I could reuse concept and glossentry definitions in multiple packages.

 

Assuming that we have base abstract information types in DITA 1.3, there will still be a need to have glossentry topics and book maps in all packages. We may want to resituate glossentry as a peer specialization to concept rather than as a specialization of concept itself. I wouldn’t imagine that the glossentry topic would be part of the abstract layer.

 

Unless I am missing something, I would recommend that we leave the DITA 1.1 topic types where they are until we have had a chance to introduce the abstract layer in DITA 1.3.

 

I apologize if I have misunderstood or I am taking the thread back to points covered in previous conversations.

 

Cheers,

Rob Hanna

 

 

From: Bruce Nevin (bnevin) [mailto:bnevin@cisco.com]
Sent: August 20, 2009 1:24 PM
To: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [dita] problem with packaging of glossaries

 

This came up in the spec authoring meeting today.

 

The problem: <glossentry> is specialized from <concept>. <task>, <concept>, and <reference> are in the TechDocs package. This forces <glossentry> etc. to be restricted to the TD package.  But non-TechDocs folks need glossaries, and support for them should be in the base.

 

Two solutions:

1. Accept this. Present it as an unfortunate fait accompli for 1.2 -- if you want a glossary, you have to use the TD package (or specialize your own).
2. Move <task>, <concept>, and <reference> back into the base, sans TD-specific domain specializations, and include those specializations in the TD package. Present this as an interim step toward simplified topics being developed by the BusDocs SC.

Comment? Action?

 

    /Bruce