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Subject: RE: [docstandards-interop-discuss] proposed TC name
David: The world is not how we ay like it to be: Those guys “noodling
with Word” include tens of thousands of public officials producing
legally binding texts; They use what they have in front of them in locked down,
enterprise configurations. The only “noodling” I see within the EU
is in using ODF (with the exception of some initial efforts by the Belgian federal
government and meeting operational resistance by many sub-national agencies). The
problem we have is that structural and presentational artifacts are mixed up in
*all* word-processing packages (an extreme case: a table is a
two-dimensional matrix but is captured normally as a presentational artefact). ‘Page’ in the context of xhtml is not accepted by
many public authorities where hard copy page numbering is *still* an
important consideration, so we are back to an issue regarding presentation
constructs. That all said, the scope as you have implied with your list of
examples (thanks for responding to that), suggests that my concerns are
probably off topic and out of scope of the proposed TC. Peter From: David RR Webber (XML)
[mailto:david@drrw.info] Peter, I think your use case is the antithesis here! The
typical user is NOT the average person noodling using MS Word for
WSYIWG!! Instead there is some business task / service being performed
associated with the content. Notice that xhtml provides an established control set here
of typical page content components - bulleted lists, tables, graphics, header,
title, bookmarks, links - that go a long way to reducing the choices down
to a common set. But we need some limited extensions for things like ToC,
footers and such that are missing from the pure browser metaphor. Instead of general users - you have business staff
preparing technical documents - here's what I envision as a partial list: 1) Software documentation 2) Engineering documentation - aircraft, vehicles, engines,
et al 3) Hardware and firmware documentation 4) User guides for technical equipment 5) Short legal document / contract preparation (1
to 3 page stuff) 6) Wiki style content submissions
-------- Original Message
-------- David: I appreciate the clarifications – I missed the early
exchanges on the list. I still can’t get my head around “a simple XML
format for documentation” – what is the scope of (intended) use?
Could someone give, say, half a dozen examples of document types that might be
covered? Given that most people use 2-3% of the functionality of any word
processing package, but everyone uses a *different* 2-3%, it might be
difficult identifying the sub-set, that’s my worry… Regards, Peter From: David RR Webber (XML)
[mailto:david@drrw.info] Peter, We had this big discussion two weeks ago. The current
scope text is misleading. It is my understanding that the whole idea is
to NOT get immersed in the OOXML / ODF / PDF quagmire - but instead to
provide a simple XML format for documentation purposes - envisioned as a blend
of DITA + xhtml + extensions and an XSD. Notice that content authoring tools already support use of
XSD templates to instruct the creation of conforming documents - including MS
Word, Corel, ODF, and then specialized editors such as XMetal. So
published templates can then be used in a variety of tools to produce the XML
content instances themselves. This would allow the EU to publish templates for documents
that would work in any any desktop tool supporting it. In essence this sidesteps the current generation of syntaxes
- which are focused much on WYSIWYG content production - rather than content
semantic and formatting alignment. Given all that - a simple TC name should elucidate the focus
here - and not lead people into thinking the problem being solved is some
bigger uber-solution. Thanks, DW
--------
Original Message -------- In a European context, "documentation" would nearly always equate to "technical documentation" and be understood as things like DocBook and not, say, legislative texts, business documents, etc. But: - when does a legislative document get covered by LegalXML? - when does a business document get covered by UBL? We can easily get lost: it should be more specific than any "XML document" but less specific than particular "XML application" documents. I understood the scope to be about interoperability between "generic" documents generated by "all-purpose" word-processing software, be that in ODF, DocBook, etc - but that begs the more fundamental question: why isn't the biggest document production platform included, that generates OOXML? The scope of the proposed TC needs to be serious in addressing this dimension, or it will be a fool's errand. Has anyone compared the scope with the new activity in the European Commission on "Open Document Exchange Formats" (!= ODF)? Could this be a collaborative effort? Is their title more useful? I think the proposed TC needs to be MUCH clearer about its scope before it'll get our vote. Peter ------------- Peter F Brown Founder, Pensive.eu Co-Editor, OASIS SOA Reference Model Lecturer at XML Summer School --- Personal: +43 676 610 0250 http://public.xdi.org/=Peter.Brown www.XMLbyStealth.net www.xmlsummerschool.com -----Original Message----- From: Dave Pawson [mailto:dave.pawson@gmail.com] Sent: 23 April 2007 14:32 To: docstandards-interop-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [docstandards-interop-discuss] proposed TC name On 23/04/07, David RR Webber (XML) <david@drrw.info> wrote: > > I actually quite like Eduardo's: > > Documentation Standards Interoperability TC. > > "Documentation" is vague enough IMHO - and people will likewise need to read the charter for explicit clarifications I like the terseness and yes, the generality. All it means is we need clarification early on in the web pages / actual standard to scope the work, which is no bad thing IMHO. > I'm not sure I'd go into machine v human readable - since that distinction is rapidly being eroded by smart machine agents. Yes, I find that (potentially) too constraining. Most will stay one side of their own boundaries, but that doesn't mean that the other side is out of scope? regards -- Dave Pawson XSLT XSL-FO FAQ. http://www.dpawson.co.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: docstandards-interop-discuss-unsubscribe@lists.oasis-open.org For additional commands, e-mail: docstandards-interop-discuss-help@lists.oasis-open.org No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.463 / Virus Database: 269.5.7/771 - Release Date: 21/04/2007 11:56 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.463 / Virus Database: 269.5.10/774 - Release Date: 23/04/2007 17:26 No virus found in this
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