RE: [dita] Can conventions for human understanding be MUST requirements?

[Don Day <dond@us.ibm.com>]

Ditto on this; Paul's experience summarizes my position as Chair for the
TC's efforts.  The development schedules of both users and tools vendors
and consultants are waiting for this DITA 1.2 spec to get legs, as plans,
budgets and opportunities are depending on it.  I suggest that the
reasonable bar for the conformance statement is "sufficiency" for now.
Other areas of review and writing still need our focus.

"Grosso, Paul" <pgrosso@ptc.com> wrote on 01/12/2010 03:52:53 PM:

> RE: [dita] Can conventions for human understanding be MUST requirements?
>
> I really think we need to have a reset on our ideas for conformance
> for the DITA 1.2 spec.
>
> Some of us have been in the standards business for a quarter of
> a century.  (Some of us have written technical standards with
> lawyers, right Eliot?)
>
> It takes a humungous effort to write a standard of any size
> that is precise enough to make detailed conformance criteria
> really feasible.  The current DITA standard is so far from
> being there--and the TC members are so far from having the
> time and expertise to get it there--that we simply cannot
> expect to get there for DITA 1.2.
>
> And, in fact, writing a spec that is so carefully phrased
> may well make it less comprehensible to the average reader
> and, in the end, make it less easy for implementors to
> comply to.
>
> Finally, we really have to get DITA 1.2 out.  If we were a
> software company, our customers would have given up on us
> by now and be demanding their maintenance contract money back.
>
> Let's realize we cannot make another pass through the spec
> for conformance language, go for the simplest conformance
> statement we can make, and get on with it.
>
> paul


Regards,
--
Don Day
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
Architect, Lightweight DITA Publishing Solutions
Email: dond@us.ibm.com
11501 Burnet Rd. MS9033E015, Austin TX 78758
Phone: +1 512-244-2868 (home office)

"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
 Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
   --T.S. Eliot