Groups - DITA TC Meeting Minutes 13 May 2014 uploaded

[Nancy Harrison<nharrison@infobridge-solutions.com>]

        Submitter's message
        Minutes of the OASIS DITA TC
Tuesday, 13 May 2014
Recorded by N. Harrison
link to agenda for this meeting:	
	https://wiki.oasis-open.org/dita/PreviousAgendas

regrets:   Tom Magliery, Mark Myers  

Standing Business
=================
Approve minutes from previous business meeting:
https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/201405/msg00005.html (6 May,Nancy Harrison)         
Proposed by Kris, seconded by Dick, approved by TC

Subcommittee Reports
	none

Announcements
	none


Business
========
1. DITA 1.3 progress
   - Redesign of "Contains and Contains by" (Anderson)
	Robert; nothing new on contains/contained by
   - First spec review (Eberlein & Anderson)
	Kris; nothing on the spec review yet
	Robert; ditto
   - Transformation utilities and DITA 1.3 grammar files 
	Eliot; haven't done anything on transform utilities, but did some research on XSDs; it's still the case that there are differences in the way different parsers process XSD. It's unlikely that anyone will run into problem, since no one ever has, but XSd 1.1 deprecates something we're using, and the replacement (overrides) doesn't have enough implementations for us to use. I'm now working thru the transforms, thinking about XSD; we're stuck with XSD 1.0 and redefines.


2. New item: Review of action items that emerged from the "Complexity discussion," late summer 2011
    https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/201108/msg00001.html (Eberlein, August 2011) 
Kris & Joann had a discussion on the necessity for more written articles, and the necessity to focus on other issues and have the Adoption TC focus on articles.
Re: code samples, Robert thinks we do have more code samples, he found some odd errors in the ones we had, and those are all fixed.
Someone noted that Keith Schungli-Roberts (www.ditawriter.com) has consolidated some samples.
- Scott; I had created a bunch of those
- Kris; anyone who championed a 1.3 feature, please work on a feature article about that feature that contains sample files
- Joann; we (Adoption TC) are asking that feature articles be tutorial in nature, not just descriptive articles.
- Kris; re; subsetting to reduce complexity, we'll have to see if we'll be able to do that.
- Michael; with Lightweight DITA (LDITA for short), it's easier for users to create minimalist DITA.  
- Some TC members asked:
	- If we make investments in samples in the spec, can't we add them to the samples in the DITA; is there anything keeping us from doing that?
- Robert; there's nothing to keep folks - especially vendors - from shipping them, as long as 1) the inclusion is according to OASIS IP rules and 2) they include caveats about the lack of official support from the TC.


3. New item: DITA 1.3 tutorials for DITA Adoption TC
Kris asked everyone to consider creating these; are any in process?
- Eliot; I'm doing one on 'DITA for small teams', I also intend to do more as I wrap up the 1.3 work.
- Stan; there are 2 in process in Help SC
- Joann; TomC signed up to do something on release mgmt.
- Chris; I also wrote an article for the CIDM newsletter
- Joann; let's look at that and see if it will work.
- Eliot; all the new 1.3 vocabulary deserve something; it should probably be on my plate, since they were mostly my proposals...
- Kris; maybe someone else should do that; there are too many for one person to do, and Eliot has other priorities.
- Joann; what should we put on our list? There's an article in process on shortdesc (Laura Feldman)
- Eliot; we need one on branch filtering. Also, I need to update my book, to address 1.3...
- Kris; some good candidates are: new sorting elements, new objects for L&T, w/guidance on new Q&A domain. Eliot, maybe you could do one on SVG and mathML domains, all in tutorial style with sample files.
- Deb; do we have anything on subjectscheme? and on using it in reviewing 1.3?
- Kris; I'd love to author it, but I have no bandwidth
- Joann; Chris Goolsby promised an article...
- Kris; we should talk to Mark Myers and SAP about authoring an article on the  new L&T objects.


4. New item: Light-weight DITA profile
    Post DITA 1.3 release? 
Kris; Are there any points or comments on how to work with it after 1.3 goes out the door?
in terms of tackling work, that's most likely Michael and an SC; the TC will have the work of pushing it thru OASIS as a 'profile'.  
- Michael; want to plug my LDITA webinar for tomorrow, will send out a link after the call. It's tomorrow at 9am ET. It's about the motivation for LD and what I hope we can achieve, plus technical bits, also that we should consider DITA a model that's not bound to one representation model; i.e. we could eventually have an HTML5 model of DITA. We could also use DITA in other formats.
- Kris; I'll be up early in Boise to listen.


5. New item: Looking ahead to DITA 2.0
Kris; how much time should we do today?
- Eliot, for me, re: 2.0, what do we want scope to be? Do we want to completely re-architect DITA, or just fix major pieces that require breaking backwards compatibility?
- Don; HTML5 has now introduced a mechanism for defining new elements; this deserves a tech. evaluation to see if it could be a different basis for specialization, from HTML5 instead of XML/DITA.
- Michael; i didn't know about that
- Don; I'll send you and the TC mail on it; it's an aspect of redefining elements so they become accesible as semantic nodes.
- Eliot; should we have a 'DITA5' to mesh with it; does that make sense?
- Robert; I lean towards a lot of cleanup; define things more clearly, or remove aspects of things that have never been used.  WRT re-architecture, any proposed changes have to be evaluated for impact on current community. 
- Kris; do we want to do a re-architecure in light of possibly big impact?
- Eliot; Robert's right, e.g. we could redo specialization, so we could use namespaces, etc, etc but it's best to fix things that are broken with least disruption. 
- Nancy; whaat about deprecating things in 1.3?
- Robert; we've already done so where we can.
- Kris; 2.0 is a way to clean up DITA, but with an eye to user impact.
- Eliot; so with 2.0, should we not add new features, but only clean up and replace problem features?
- Robert; if we can't add new features to 2.0, we won't have any for 6-7 years.
maybe we could cap the number of individual proposals.
- Kris; I'd second individual caps on proposals.
- Stan; if we were all in a product team and DITA was product, we'd be looking at a long term product map. it would be useful to have a sense of where we want to go, and don't want to go, relative to a longer road map. It might be good to re-set some unreasonable public expectations.
- Dick; good point, and gives focus on what we do put in releases.
- Robert; the theme seems to be reducing complexity and clarifying goals.
- Dick; naybe taking a look at what we can do in RNG that we couldn't do in DTDs; that's what DocBook TC did when we went to RNG.
- Don; any ideas on web comnmponents in html5?
- Michael; i struggled with that; I've looked at your mail, and it says you can create new elements, but it looks like it's just using an @ on element to specialize the element type. but it didn't look like it was really a new element. I'm not sure of the value proposition.
- Don; there may be add'l examples since what I sent you.
- Michael; if their component model provides formal syntax, that would help with LDITA, but it doesn't look like it. 
- Don; also, there's no schema for insuring that elements are in a proper sequence.
- Michael; another reason to keep around the XML version. 
- Eliot; i'd like to hold off on this till 1.3 is in the OASIS process. We still have users on 1.1; getting them to 1.3 will be a challennge for the next 1-2 years. 
 

ended at 11:55


















- Redesign of "Contains and Contains by" (Anderson)
Robert; no change since last mtg, it's on my agenda for this week; I didn't get a chance at the conference to sit down with Eliot to master transform arcana.
Eliot; I did sit down with Chris and showed him the magic scripts.
Kris; at some point, we may want to just scrap our idea of having different distribution packages for 1.3; the redesign is a key dependency for that.
- First spec review (Eberlein & Anderson)
Kris; no changes in spec review, there are still about 50 comments out there that Robert and I have to accommodate, including 3 asking for real re-architecting of keys/keyscopes.  We need to do that, but haven't been able to do it yet.
Robert; After a deadline today for 'real' work, hopefully can work on this after that.
- Transformation utilities and DITA 1.3 grammar files 
Eliot; I'm currently running into an issue that I can't resolve, i.e. version-specific shells for L&T topics aren't validating; once I get those working, then I should be 100% complete. Once I do that, I just need to go over all the proposals and make sure all aspects of all proposals are in the RNG/XSD/DTD. Will also have an automated check method from Jirka
Kris; Is there anyone who can help you?
Eliot; I'm looking at everything; may be reaching out to anyone I think can help in the next few days.


2. Rehash of CMS/DITA NA America conference
Kris; 10 out of 16 voting TC members were there, a record %
Joann; sessions were generally well-atended, especially 1.3 related sessions; many new users at conference, 
Michael; Was it still primarily techcomm folks
Joann; lots of L&T folks, and those L&T sessions were well attended; also many from heavy machinery industry, John Deere, etc. Also, medical devices and medical content representation, so, an increase in diversity.
MP; how is 'medical devices' separate from 'medical content'?
Joann; 'medical content' is descriptions of medical procedures.
Kris; my client 'Healthwise' was there; they're a portal for medical content.
Don; anyone from regulatory community?
Joann; yes, we're seeing an uptick in that; it's a natural for DITA. they tend to have multiple authors and use MSWord and have a terrible time with it.
In vendors' exhibits, George Bina's review on iPad was good. New simplified editing environments (word-like) are improving the appeal by making presentation of DITA simpler-looking, so other audiences don't see it as a significant problem.
Don; what about any of the receiving federal agencies on the consuming end?
Joann; no, they don't come, it would be good if OASIS helped us out on that.
Kris; how can they?
joann; Maybe with some outreach activity, i.e. how many agencies are OASIS members, so if we did a webinar, who should we aim it to? 
Kris; I attended all TC members sessions and thought they were all excellent, and very well-attended (Chris, Stan, Eliot, Kris's 'intro to 1.3' called out)
Stan; I made an effort to recruit people to do TC/SC committee work; got some interest in writing/reviewing work.
Joann; I keep making speeches to get folks emrolled, esp. if their companies are in OASIS.
Stan; I'd be surprised if we didn't pick up a few people in the next few months.
Joann; It would be good to do a webinar to reach out to folks about what they want in the next version of DITA.  When might we have a 1.3 webinar?
Kris; joann, when do you think?
joann; late June??
kris; sounds good.


3. New item: Light-weight DITA (Michael Priestley)
    http://dita.xml.org/blog/overview-of-lightweight-dita-xdita-and-hdita (Overview on dita.xml.org
    http://dita.xml.org/blog/of-conferences-and-webinars-on-lightweight-dita-and-such (Upcoming Webinar on May 14) 
MP gave overview; couple of slide decks, overview posted some draft doc types and updated presentation, both on slideshare. main recent changes; changes that aren't yet 'dita, meet XML' ; chance to intercept 'cycle of destruction' adopt system, add features so it's too complex so no one wants to use it, oer and over again. pendulum swinging between 'too comlex' and 'not complex enough'.  'Start with lightweight DITA and if you need more features, gradually move up to fuller DITA. But if XML is abhorrent, then here's a mapping between L.DITA (with some extensions) and HTML5 subset w/some extensions.  so blogpost has mapping between LDITA and HTML5. In IBM, somefolks hate DITA, not about word, but simple web forms.  Does DITA need tags??   Gives DITA adopters access to wider content. opens up opportunities in both directions , provides integration point against whole corporate content spectrum. definitely need to start a SC and get stuff going; talking with kris/chriss on use cases and personas, w/don on prototypes. presented at intelligent content conf about applicability of LDITA to subset of marketing content; maps pretty well;
joann; we're using DITA for marketing and for HR content with one company; had a presentation at CMS last year.mktg uses dita to produce customer brochures
mp; case study?
joann; mktg folks  an produce custom product catalog when they go to a customer site. denise griggs did HR presentation
kris; tony self did presentation at DITA 2008 on infomapping in Australia so people could put articles together from data in a database.
joann; we're do ing all our proposals in DITA
chris; we do all our propoasals and func specs in DITA, and can create 'pre-baked' docs from this has to be part of DITA 2.0, so DITA maps have to link to non-DITA stuff.
joann; in adoption TC, talked about need for other specializations that can become part of a document.
kris; other views on good use cases for LDITA?
eliot; good for publishing world; smes aren't going to author in anything but word at this point,m so 'markdown' is a big thing
mp; markdown not targeting everything, but a 'markdown profiles', could apply to Word, OpenOffice as well as HTML5. To get use from this, has to be at least title, body and sections...
don; see the tentative?/definitive? guide to markdown.
chris; biggest problem with markdown is they don't support tables
mp; they have an extension to do that
chris; but it's hard to use
eliot; does markdown provide features for structuring text at all
don; dosn't lend itself to that
eliot; so you have to use some private tagging convention?
kris; back to LDITA; I'd love to create a word or googledocs or ODF and be able to save it in DITA. MP, what do you see as possible in terms of roundtripping in both directions
mp; about locating common denominators; so set params on doctypes elements that eliminate attributes and nesting, you have markdown. in Markdown, eliminate interactivity and multimedia, you can get to LDITA.  Hopefully, for word and ODF, if you use a certain template, and go with certain rules, you can go to LDITA, and converse will also be true, so can get to reliable round-tripping. On DITA side you have a validating doc, on non XML side. So DITA doesn't have to be XML, can constrain down to a point that can be supported in other formats.; many intersection points, DITA becomes common thread that ties together many content streams.
kris; would love to see a slide showing this, with a story, to make it mroe clear for me; what you can and can't do.  Also, do you also see this to opening the marketplace to lighter-weight tools for people to ouse
mp; it has to; on XML, need lighter weight tools, on non-dita need DITA profiles, e.g. madcap flare could be used for this, we need to make the case for DITA as a standard; Madcap does a lot of good stuff, but it's proprietary. IF you're using it, why isn't there a mapping to a standard?  Needs to be pressure from customers of these tools to add DITA connection to these tools. Need to be able to integrate these tools into common content stream; 'you don't solve your silo problem by building a bigger silo.' If your cilos can't communicate, [with DITA was an integration point], it's a real cost to the enterprise.  
joann; that would be a really good white paper



4. New item: Review of action items that emerged from the "Complexity discussion," late summer 2011
    https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/201108/msg00001.html (Eberlein, August 2011) 
Kris; please look at the article and think about it for what you might want to do; will bring it up next week.

meeting closed at 11:59
        
-- Nancy Harrison

Document Name: DITA TC Meeting Minutes 13 May 2014

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Submitter: Nancy Harrison
Group: OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC
Folder: Meeting Notes
Date submitted: 2014-05-19 22:38:51