>
departures from how we've done things previously and
> arguably counter-intuitive to DITA
principles.
Insofar as it conflicts with 'DITA
principles', the counter to this is that this spec should exemplify what it
specifies and the recommendations of the Adoption TC. This is obviously not true
of all OASIS standards, but clearly appropriate for a standard that is effective
on documentation and is applied to the documentation of the standard itself. It
is that recursive self-application that should exempt DITA from some
across-the-board generalizations. Fortunately, we're not bedevilled with small
minds in OASIS, so we should be able to avoid a foolish consistency. (That
said, it applies equally to clinging to "how we've done things previously"
without such warrant.)
/B
Hi, fellow TC members.
We got feedback
from Mary McRae about the draft of the DITA 1.2 spec yesterday. I've added
Mary's comments to a Wiki page, to make them easier to read -- and to make it
easier for us to track our progress in fixing issues:
http://wiki.oasis-open.org/dita/CD01
If
you browse through the page, you'll see that we are left with four main areas
of work or negotiation:
- Need for a namespace document
- (PDF) Stylistic improvements, to better align it with
OASIS templates (footers, styles for various levels of titles)
- (PDF) Need to fix text overruns in tables
- (XHTML) Mary has requested changes from how the DITA
1.0 and DITA 1.1 specs were issued:
- Number all topics with section and subsection
numbers
- Remove link previews generated from
<shortdesc> elements, to remove duplication
- Ensure that all topics contain a link to the "Next"
topic in the reading order
I've
requested feedback from Mary about which issues need to addressed before we
can issue the spec for public review. I sincerely hope that she will permit us
to finish refining our PDF styling during the public review. However, the
first and second changes requested to the XHTML output call for more serious
reflection, as they are departures from how we've done things previously and
arguably counter-intuitive to DITA principles.
Thoughts from other TC
members?
The third XHTML item either already is effectively handled --
the URL at the bottom of each topic takes the reader back to the appropriate
bookmark for the topic in the TOC -- or could be addressed by an override that
IBM uses for their tutorial specialization.
Best,
Kris
Kristen James
Eberlein Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting Secretary, OASIS DITA
Technical Committee Charter member, OASIS DITA Adoption Committee www.eberleinconsulting.com +1 919 682-2290;
keberlein (skype)
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