Updated proposal text for XML 2006 presentation - feedback encouraged

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

I'll be submitting this end of day Friday
- I'll attempt to address any feedback I receive before then.

Play well with others: DITA. DocBook,
and ODF aim for interoperability
--------------------------------------------------------
The DITA, DocBook, and ODF TCs are collaborating
on making standards work together, so that document authors can get content
that works together. Choosing a standard document format should mean more
than just using standard tools: it should mean working with other standards,
opening doors to reuse across format boundaries, and giving organizations
control of their content strategy.

Choosing a document standard can affect
an organization's entire content strategy: it can lock in format limitations
and tool requirements and limit collaboration.  Organizations face
a further choice between enforcing a single standard that maximizes interoperability
across projects, or allowing multiple standards that maximize efficiency
in each individual project. 

The tradeoff between these approaches
seems fundamental to document formats, but it isn't. If the document standards
themselves are enabled to provide interoperability, then the choice of
standard for each project can be made based on that project's specific
needs, without sacrificing cross-organization requirements.

Members of the OASIS TCs for DITA, DocBook,
and ODF are currently collaborating on improved interoperability between
document-oriented OASIS standards. The starting point for the discussion
is the development of an interoperability scenario to show why and how
content might be reused across formats.

The presentation will describe the interoperability
scenario, discuss the steps involved in enabling reuse across formats,
and discuss the plan for continuing work on standards interoperability
including:
- development of an interoperability
demo based on the scenario, including samples and proof-of-concept transforms
- development of reliable transforms
between the formats
- preservation of semantic information
across transformations to enable round-tripping of content

For each standard (DITA, DocBook, ODF),
the presentation will describe:
- current support for interoperability
- defining mappings to other standards
- applying constraints to limit content
to interoperable subsets
- preserving migrated semantics for
round-tripping
- planned support for interoperability

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