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Stan, thanks you doing such a careful and critical reading. A few
comments about the substantive points:
- Yes, XDITA will be a subset of DITA 1.3 plus the new
multimedia domain. (How I wish that we had introduced the
multimedia domain in 1.3 ...)
- Other points hinge around what claims we make for
compatibility and interoperability, with the additional
messiness of the multiple formats (XDITA, MDITA, and HDITA).
- And regarding your final point:
"Probably my real question runs, "Is LwDITA another XML silo
that is functionally incompatible with DocBook, DITA 1.3, or
DITA 2.0?" If I have a significant investment in DocBook, DITA
1.3, or DITA 2.0, do I need to abandon that investment when I
implement a project in LwDITA? All four of these "products" are
from OASIS. Honestly -- if I were a MadCap or Confluence
marketing hack, documenting how OASIS produced four,
incompatible XML solutions that address the same market is all
that I would need to make my quarterly sales targets for a few
years. Even if we cannot do anything about the incompatibility,
we should consider being up front about it."
I don't think we can anything about compatibility or
interoperability with DocBook. But the plan is for XDITA to be a
valid subset of DITA 1.3 and DITA 2.0; by valid subset, I mean
that authors could copy-and-paste content from an XDITA map to a
DITA 1.3 or DITA 2.0 map, or from an XDITA topic to a DITA 1.3 or
DITA 2.0 topic. Obviously, the authoring and publishing
environment will need to have the appropriate grammar files
installed.
Best,
Kris
Kristen James Eberlein
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting
www.eberleinconsulting.com
+1 919 682-2290; kriseberlein (skype)
On 8/25/2017 4:49 PM, Dr. Stanley
Doherty wrote:
Hi --
I have somme comments and a few suggested line edits. Page numbers are keyed to the draft #19 PDF.
Page Comment
------ --------------------------------------------------------------------
05 Do we need a term to refer to "full DITA" (1.3 or 2.0)?
05 "In comparison to DITA 1.3, LwDITA has a limited . . . " should really
specify that XDITA has a limited element/attribute set.
05 I keep wanting to see the word "subset" in this context to refer to the
relationship between DITA 1.3 and XDITA. Is that incorrect?
07 Shouldn't keyref appear in the list?
08 Spitballing here . . . wouldn't one argument in favor of LwDITA be that it
is more suitable for out-of-the-box authoring implementations whereas
DITA 1.3 and DITA 2.0 are increasingly designed to be frameworks that
require/encourage customization?
09 3.1 Simplified structure - third para should be a table.
09 3.1 Simplified structure - is suggesting that LwDITA has benefits for
both small and large projects feels like overselling the scalability
of LwDITA. Large projects. Not buying it.
10 Paragraph on content models follows a little closely on the paragraph
authoring formats. Are content models AND authoring (markup) formats
"compatible"? Could I admix any combination of XDITA, MDITA, and HDITA
topics/maps with the expectation that they will all parse/process
correctly? Would it be to describe the content models as "comparable"
or "consistent" to avoid confusion with authoring format compatibility?
10 3.3 Development . . . - Opening subject "We" should be "OASIS" or
whatever.
11 Would the list be more clear if it were a three-row table grouping
LwDITA elements into structural, blocks, and in-line elements? Just a
thought.
12 The adjective "strict" is making me stop reading each time. Would
"constrained" or "restrictive" be better?
12 Only XDITA is more "strict" right?
19 MDITA audience - consider adding a bit about Markdown being the universal
language of software API frameworks these days. By authoring in MDITA,
teams have effectively single-sourced content for API frameworks AND
tech pubs.
21 5.4 Cross-format . . . needs additional detail/perspective. Lay it out.
- XDITA maps can reference XDITA, MDITA, and HDITA topics. O-positive.
- MDITA maps can reference only MDITA topics.
- HDITA maps can reference only HDITA topics.
- LwDITA topics can reference keywords defined in XDITA, MDITA, and
HDITA topics. Too simple a statement?
- XDITA topics can transclude block-level content exclusively from
other XDITA topics.
- MDITA and HDITA cannot transclude block-level content.
Longtime users of Jarno's plugins do not want to lose functionality.
Hairball - If none of this works, let's say so up front.
a. Full-DITA maps referencing XDITA topics (after all, they have the same
file extension)?
b. XDITA maps referencing full-DITA topics?
c. XDITA and full-DITA topics conref'ing content in one another's topics?
Probably my real question runs, "Is LwDITA another XML silo that is functionally incompatible with DocBook, DITA 1.3, or DITA 2.0?" If I have a significant investment in DocBook, DITA 1.3, or DITA 2.0, do I need to abandon that investment when I implement a project in LwDITA? All four of these "products" are from OASIS. Honestly -- if I were a MadCap or Confluence marketing hack, documenting how OASIS produced four, incompatible XML solutions that address the same market is all that I would need to make my quarterly sales targets for a few years. Even if we cannot do anything about the incompatibility, we should consider being up front about it.
Stan
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