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Subject: Minutes from call 2007/07/13



In attendance:
robert anderson (dita)
nancy harrison (docbook/dita)
rob weir (odf)
dick hamilton (docbook)
don day (dita)
michael priestley (dita)
mary macrae (oasis)
dee schur (oasis)

- michael gave an update on erik hennum's work on a dita/docbook interop proof of concept - support for a dita map pointing at docbook sections, transforming them to dita topics as part of the build process; the flip side of the earlier proof of concept that lets docbook embed a dita map and process the referenced topics into the docbook publishing stream. work in progress.

- michael suggested that there is probably a need/opportunity to preserve the source language's semantics in the target format, perhaps using outputclass attribute in dita, or equivalent in docbook (role attribute?)

- dick suggested that a dita specalization to provide an exact semantic match for docbook elements would be even better than having outputclass

- don suggested that a domain specialization might be the best way to go, since it allows preservation of the meaning of an element without trying to create a full docbook structure in dita (which would be a force fit)

- michael agreed that a domain specialization seemed a good direction, while wanting to be careful of overlap/redundancy (ie create specializations when there is a real semantic distinction, not just a naming difference like p vs. para)

summary of existing transform options/activities:
- dita2docbook - demo exists in toolkit
- docbook2dita using map - demo from erik
- dita enablement for docbook - using docbook domain specialization - dick to investigate/drive
- docbook2odf - need something - converter exists?
- odf2docbook - openoffice has filter as starting point
- dita2odf - ask odf metadata subcomittee if they have interest in collaborating here
- odf2dita - "
- also should investigate embedding dita in odf, could then process the compound document to docbook

- michael priestley suggested that the odf interop story might not be just about word processor documents, but also about spreadsheets - a potential match for ditamap tables, as well as tables in content.

- rob weir suggested that the ability to generate docs from a spreadsheet - like javadoc for spreadsheets - would be useful

- michael conveyed paul prescod's hope for convergence on infrastucture/syntax between standards, as well as content sharing. for example, having the same attributes in all standards to identify translatibility etc. would be very useful for translation vendors

- rob weir suggested we identify intersections/opportunities as first stage - longer term effort, will depend on where each standard is in a particular area (hard to change established practices, but should try to avoid unnecessary further divergence)

- some discussion about how to coordinate shared technical aspects of our standard; all agreed that the current discussion list could evolve into becoming a tc that provides such coordination/guidance - better to do as tc because liaisions don't scale well as new standards emerge.

- potential path is discussion list -> joint TC -> full TC

- dick re strawman: any way to simplify? suggested eliminating one of the DITA specializations

venues:
- dita europe:
   - michael will be there as keynote, can make sure interop is on the agenda

- xml 2006: in boston
   - they are interested, will investigate further

- open publish: baltimore - anyone from the baltimore area? would be good to have presence at both if possible

That's it for today - thanks all for a productive meeting, and I'm off on vacation now.

Have a good one,

Michael Priestley
IBM DITA Architect and Classification Schema PDT Lead
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25


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