Re: [dita] Use of term "DITA" outside OASIS?

["Michael Priestley" <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>]

I had a brief back and forth with the company
founder about the post on LinkedIn which was encouraging

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6268341889850843136/

Michael Priestley, Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM)
Enterprise Content Technology Strategist
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com



From:      
 Jang <jang@jang.nl>
To:      
 Alan Houser <arh@groupwellesley.com>
Cc:      
 DITA Technical Committee
<dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
Date:      
 05/15/2017 10:03 AM
Subject:    
   Re: [dita] Use
of term "DITA" outside OASIS?
Sent by:    
   <dita@lists.oasis-open.org>

---

Hi Alan and other TC colleagues,

I do not think there is any way in which OASIS can prevent
the (ab)use of DITA in any kind of publication, especially when it is blog
posts. DITA is not a registered trademark (or maybe it is, but then it
refers to sun glasses, hockey sticks or a burlesque lady we all know).
I also think that this is not a problem at all, and we should not be too
worried about this blog post.

If “Open DITA” would be formally proposed as a standard
within OASIS, it could easily be shot down, and if a competing standards
body is adopting a group that works on a standard with that name, OASIS
would have to use its liaisons with the competing standards body to get
them to refuse hosting the initiators. These measures by OASIS will very
probably not be required at all, as this idea will not gain much traction
with anyone who knows enough about DITA to become actively involved in
(re)defining standards. 

And so it becomes a fairly harmless blog post by a company
(or an individual in a company), in an attempt to catch the attention of
DITA newbies. What we can do as DITA professionals is post reactions. Let
DITA newbies know why you cannot simply dilute DITA with other stuff without
rendering it useless for what it is supposed to do.

The suggestion to allow DOCX mixed in with DITA is ridiculous
in the light of trying to reduce DITA complexity. Anyone who has ever opened
up this (ar any) can of worms created by Microsoft knows that DITA is a
breeze compared to that. But Word is very effective in hiding all the catastrophic
complexity under the hood. That is a lesson to be learned and it is, in
my view, the ONLY lesson we need to learn here. 

The gut reaction of DITA newbies when they see naked DITA
in something as simpleminded as Notepad is not to be taken at face value.
It is not complexity that is the problem. If this were true, then no one
would ever dare to ride a Tesla. The outcries about the supposed DITA complexity
over the past years just go to show that there is work to be done on the
tools that make this standard usable by mere mortals. I do understand that
this is not something the TC can do, but everyone who is on the committee
can find ways to support the creation of tools that hide complexity under
the hood of a good GUI.

The blog post falls into the same trap that a lot of DITA
newbies fall into: blaming the DITA standard for complexity, in comparison
with standards that either fall short of the semantic strength (HTML) or
hide their own chaos (Word). In a way, our very own Lightweight DITA initiative
runs the risk of doing the same. If we strongly oppose the idea of an Open
DITA, we should seriously look at how different this proposal is from the
Lightweight DITA proposal.

In the meantime, I choose to not spend my time worrying
about obviously misled (or misleading) blog posts, but instead on creating
and promoting tools that hide the inevitable complexity. In DITA, or in
anything else.

Jang




On 14 May 2017, at 22:08, Alan Houser <arh@groupwellesley.com>
wrote:

Colleagues,

I'm curious about the rules and constraints around the use of the term
"DITA" (referring to the architectural framework) outside OASIS
activities and specifications. It's currently used in company and product
names. But this blog post gave me some pause --

http://blog.ditaexchange.com/open-dita-lets-make-structured-writing-for-everyone

While the ideas in the post are intriguing and worthy of pursuit, the name
"Open DITA" may be problematic from the perspective of OASIS
branding and potential adopter confusion.

Again, curious...

-Alan

-- 
Alan Houser
Group Wellesley, Inc.
Consultant and Trainer, Technical Publishing
arh on Twitter
412-450-0532


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