Re: [docbook-tc] DocBook Charter

[Michael Smith <smith@xml-doc.org>]

To the list of users, please add Mandrakelinux.

Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> writes:

> I reviewed Karl's notes on the last draft on which he commented and
> the last charter that we reviewed and made a couple of very small
> changes. (In fact, all I added was a sentence to the first paragraph
> of the statement of purpose.)
> 
> I propose that we adopt the following charter today and forward it to
> OASIS again for approval.
> 
> 
> Name
> 
> The name of this Technical Committee is the "OASIS DocBook Technical
> Committee".
> 
> Statement of Purpose
> 
> Almost all computer hardware and software developed around the world
> needs some documentation. For the most part, this documentation has a
> similar structure and a large core of common idioms. The community
> benefits from having a standard, open, interchangeable vocabulary in
> which to write this documentation. DocBook has been, and will continue
> to be, designed to satisfy this requirement. For more than a decade,
> DocBook has provided a structured markup vocabulary for just this
> purpose.
> 
> DocBook is now widely used in both commercial and Open Source
> environments including Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD, GNOME,
> Hewlett-Packard, IBM Linux Technology Center, KDE, Linux Documentation
> Project, PHP, Red Hat, SUSE, Subversion, and Sun Microsystems, to
> name just a few.
> 
> The DocBook Technical Committee is chartered to develop and maintain
> the DocBook family of specifications and to continue to support its
> ever growing user base. In particular, the XML and SGML DocBook
> schemas, a suite of extension modules, and a simplified authoring
> subset of DocBook. The Technical Committee plans to support a variety
> of schema languages and may develop additional modules and derived
> document types.
> 
> Scope of Work
> 
> The TC is engaged in evolving the suite of DocBook specifications. The
> scope of DocBook is computer hardware and software documentation.
> Broadly, this includes both print and online tutorial and reference
> documentation as well as online help, user guides, exercises and other
> ancillary forms of documentation.
> 
> This effort will deliver on the following goals:
> 
>     * Evolve DocBook beyond DTDs into modern schema languages.
> 
>     * Address issues and enhancement requests that have arisen from
>       experience with real-world DocBook implementations.
> 
>     * Add support for features that were deferred from previous
>       versions of DocBook.
> 
> Most requests for enhancement that are not motivated by a requirement
> in computer hardware or software documentation are considered out of
> scope. It is not a goal of the Technical Committee to expand the scope
> of DocBook to include additional, unrelated problem domains.
> 
> List of Deliverables
> 
> The TC expects to update the DocBook family of specifications to
> reflect issues and enhancements adopted by the TC. Our current
> timeline for this evolution is:
> 
> Q4 2004
> 
>   * The DocBook SGML Document Type, V4.4
>   * The DocBook XML Document Type, V4.4
>   * Simplified DocBook, V1.1
> 
> Q1 2005
> 
>   * The DocBook EBNF Module, V1.3
>   * The DocBook HTML Forms Module, V1.3
>   * The DocBook MathML Module, V1.3
>   * The DocBook SVG Module, V1.3
> 
> The TC is also engaged in an exploration of DocBook V5.0, a complete
> reimplementation of DocBook in RELAX NG. This work is expected to
> produce specifications that update, augment, or replace all of the
> above. The TC expects to enter public beta testing sometime in 2005.
> 
> Additional documents may also be produced at the Committee's
> discretion. The TC's intent is to pursue OASIS Standard status for
> major DocBook revisions.
> 
> Audience
> 
> The primary audience for the final output of this TC is structured
> documentation system architects, implementers, authors, and users.
> 
> Language of the TC
> 
> All business of the TC will be conducted in English.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>                                         Be seeing you,
>                                           norm
>

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