RE: [dita] Use of "claims to be DITA aware": Why I Said It Like That

["Su-Laine Yeo" <su-laine.yeo@justsystems.com>]

Hi Tony,

Regarding differentiation between DITA-aware and specialization-aware, I
was hoping to cover that in the second sentence which says, "They must
also must also document procedures to support creating arbitrary valid
documents using arbitrary DITA specializations." Maybe this could be
clarified by saying instead, "Tools that claim to support specialization
must also document procedures for creating arbitrary valid documents
using arbitrary DITA specializations." BTW this procedure could be
"contact us for a quote."

> Would the requirement that the tool provide access to all elements and
> attributes be too restrictive for both "abstraction layer" authoring
tools
> and very specialised authoring tools (such as an authoring tool
designed for
> creating reference topics only)? 

These tools could still claim to partially support DITA authoring, which
is what they aspire to do. 
I must say though that I'm not confident that a conformance statement
can outsmart vendor marketing spin.   

Su-Laine

-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Self [mailto:tself@hyperwrite.com] 
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2010 5:07 PM
To: Su-Laine Yeo; 'dita'
Subject: RE: [dita] Use of "claims to be DITA aware": Why I Said It Like
That

Hi Su-Laine (and all)

Your revised text doesn't allow for the differentiation between
DITA-aware
and specialisation-aware. Maybe the text could be separated into two
pieces,
starting with (respectively):

"Tools that claim to support base content model DITA authoring..."
and
"Tools that claim to support specialised content model DITA
authoring..."

Would the requirement that the tool provide access to all elements and
attributes be too restrictive for both "abstraction layer" authoring
tools
and very specialised authoring tools (such as an authoring tool designed
for
creating reference topics only)? I think it *would* be too restrictive,
but
I can't immediately think of another way of expressing the conformance
requirement.

Tony Self



-----Original Message-----
From: Su-Laine Yeo [mailto:su-laine.yeo@justsystems.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, 23 February 2010 11:17 AM
To: dita; tony.self@hyperwrite.com
Subject: RE: [dita] Use of "claims to be DITA aware": Why I Said It Like
That

Here's a revised proposal with tweaks to more directly address "output
as DITA" claims:

"Tools that claim to support DITA authoring, or claim to support
producing output as DITA, must allow authors to create arbitrary valid
documents using the complete base DITA vocabulary, i.e. all DITA topic
and map types, including all base element and attribute types. They must
also must also document procedures to support creating arbitrary valid
documents using arbitrary DITA specializations. Tools that claim partial
support of DITA authoring or partial support of producing output as
DITA, but do not support creation of arbitrary valid documents using the
complete base DITA vocabulary, must document what parts of the
vocabulary are not supported."


Su-Laine