Re: [xdi] Bill: RE your other topics in your response to Minutes: XDI TC Telecon Friday 2013-03-15

[Drummond Reed <drummond.reed@xdi.org>]

Chet, thanks very much, I had sent you a message offlist per an action item I had from our last TC call to ask you about just this, so I look forward to a group of us talking with you in the next few days.

Best,

=Drummond  

On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 6:29 AM, Chet Ensign <chet.ensign@oasis-open.org> wrote:

Hi all, 

On the subject of spec formats, if you do want to look into Latex, the CMIS TC has published their latest spec in Tex. See the directory in http://docs.oasis-open.org/cmis/CMIS/v1.1/cs01/ . That means that they have set up style sheets to render the spec drafts in the OASIS format. David Choy is the chair and I'm sure he can point you to info / people who could help get you set up. 

The DITA TC is obviously set up to author and publish in OASIS format from DITA but I see that you have already decided against that. The other possibility is DocBook. Ken Holman of the UBL TC has prepared a publishing environment that will produce OASIS format from that XML and he'd be happy to help get you going there. 

Whatever format you go with, let's coordinate as you start preparing content so that I can vet your early drafts to ensure they are in OASIS format and have all the required bits and pieces. I've worked with the other TCs to get it sorted out and, come public review time, it makes the whole process much easier. 

Let me know if you have any questions. 

Best, 

/chet   

On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 4:20 AM, Drummond Reed <drummond.reed@xdi.org> wrote:

On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 6:23 AM, Barnhill, William [USA] <barnhill_william@bah.com> wrote:

Thanks for discussing the feedback at the meeting.  Unfortunately (well, from an XDI point of view) I'll be on a cruise ship during the next call, without internet or phone.  As a result I thought I'd send out some more thoughts in email.  

I think IIW is a great target for a release date.  I'd recommend earlier for a releasable product though, which will allow socializing the spec docs with key people, and revising if needed, prior to IIW.  In other words I think IIW is a great target for a beta release, but not for an alpha one.

Agreed. We'll basically start getting them out as soon as we can.

 

On the spec format, DITA is in my opinion the technical winner...but didn't get adopted in the TC so we need something people are more familiar with.  XHTML is a possibility, but I'd caution against using XHTML as HTML (in other words writing XHTML but publishing as a non-XHTML mime type).  That was a big trend when XHTML was on the rise, as a way of getting around the strictness of XHTML syntax, but it means the browser is basically just treating it as a flavor of HTML. I'd actually recommend MarkDown instead, for the following reasons: (1) Github supports MarkDown rendering out of the box if the file has the suffix MD; (2) Github supports MarkDown editing on the site now; (3) MarkDown, while inferior to DITA from a full-kit publishing perspective, still is an intermediate format that can be rendered to HTML5 or PDF, and probably does cover 80% or so of markup needs.  I do think using Github is a clear win.  

Thanks, that's a great perspective. Peter Davis has put in a good word for Latex. We'll figure out the best option as quickly as we can.

On "Drummond explained that XDI forms a bridge between two fields..."  I think Drummond is right, but I also think it is broader than that.  Let me digress a little about Semiotics.  From wikipedia, semiotics is "is the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.".  Semiotics in digital systems and communities is my specialty.  The wikipedia article says further on, paraphrased, that... semiotics is often divided into three branches: (1) Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata, or meaning; (2) Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structure; (3) Pragmatics: Relation between signs and the effects they have on the entities who interact with them.  Up until now each Web technology has focused on one of those three.  URLs focus on syntactics. RDF focuses on semantics.  XACML focuses on pragmatics.  Granted, these are broad interpretations of the focus of these technologies, but I think it fits.  The revolutionary leap enabled by XRI addressing that both XDI and ADDIE take is the combined focus on all three branches of semiotics as they apply to the data web.  XDI will address synchronous use cases, ADDIE asynchronous.

Cool. The analogy certainly makes sense to me. I take it ADDIE is the name for the async protocol you mentioned on an earlier call?

=Drummond  

--

/chet 
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Chet Ensign
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