RE: [dita] FOR YOUR REVIEW AND APPROVAL: DITA Help Technologies Guide

Hi Su-Laine --

In terms of what is or is not appropriate procedurally for DITA Technical Committee approval of a DITA Subcommittee (SC) document, I defer entirely to the TC Chair, the TC, and OASIS. 

In terms of this proposed subcommittee publication and others in the pipeline (preceding and following), I can provide some context ... at least from my perspective. :-)

Subcommittees should seek approval from their parent TC(s) before they publish documents for at least three reasons:

1. Sanity check -- Does this proposed publication conform to the goals of the 
    subcommittee? Is it appropriate?
2. Sanity check -- Does the proposed publication offer value to the target 
    community? In this case our audience consists of  Help authors who use 
    DITA as their source.
3. Endorsement -- Does the proposed publication reflect positively on the
    overall mission of the TC? Would members of the TC promote this
    publication in their respective organizations?

The DITA Help SC has updated the TC on its proposed DITA 1.2 and DITA 1.3 goals and activities numerous times:
- DITA 1.2:
  > Get organized
  > Survey the state of DITA-authored Help
  > Educate DITA users about existing solutions (this publication)
- DITA 1.3:
  > Continue to educate folks about existing solutions
  > Identify and develop specializations and custom processing
     that would advance the feature set and usability of
     DITA-authored Help.

Before your email last evening, all the feedback that I have received has been supportive of the content in the DITA Help Technologies Guide and of approving it at our TC meeting today. There are a couple of nice-to-have production edits and nice-to-do build improvements (notably DITA 1.2 and DITA-OT1.5 M11), but otherwise what is before the TC represents the best effort of the Help Subcommittee. I continue to recommend that we discuss and approve it today. 

Thanx,
Stan

----- Original Message -----

From: "Su-Laine Yeo" 

To: , 

Cc: , , "Tony Self" 

Subject: RE: [dita] FOR YOUR REVIEW AND APPROVAL: DITA Help Technologies Guide

Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 18:07:57 -0700

I should rephrase my earlier comment: I can see this type of document as

being valuable, but I am unconvinced that an OASIS committee should

publish this kind of document. I've read the DHSC Statement of Purpose

here:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=dita-help and

I don't see how this draft guide fits.

Su-Laine

Su-Laine Yeo

Interaction Design Specialist

JustSystems Canada, Inc.

Office: 778-327-6356



www.justsystems.com

-----Original Message-----

From: Su-Laine Yeo [mailto:]

Sent: Monday, March 09, 2009 3:09 PM

To: ; 

Cc: ; ; Tony Self

Subject: RE: [dita] FOR YOUR REVIEW AND APPROVAL: DITA Help Technologies

Guide

Thanks Stan. I can see this type of document as being valuable, and I am

glad the Help Subcommitee took the initiative.

However, I question the value of having the DITA TC give their approval

of this document.  What is "approval" by the TC intended to convey to

the public who reads the document? The TC members are not necessarily

experts in the technologies described in this guide. Much of the factual

information in the draft guide is impossible for individual DITA TC

members to test and verify for themselves in a reasonable timeframe, as

verification would depend on extensive experience with a very wide range

of technologies, some of which are expensive and some of which have not

yet been released. The guide also contains predictions along the lines

of, "Such and such a group will be using technology x in the future",

which we obviously also cannot verify.

Another thing that "approval" could mean is that the TC considers the

opinions expressed in the document, and the amount of emphasis given to

various products, to be free of bias towards particular vendors. I am

not at all convinced that this is true; the fact that some

product-specific sections are written by people who work for the product

vendor would indicate otherwise.

It's great that you've given the TC the opportunity to review this

document, however the word "approval" is problematic for me.

Best regards,

Su-Laine

Su-Laine Yeo

Interaction Design Specialist

JustSystems Canada, Inc.

Office: 778-327-6356



www.justsystems.com

-----Original Message-----

From:  [mailto:]

Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 10:43 AM

To: 

Cc: ; ; Tony Self

Subject: [dita] FOR YOUR REVIEW AND APPROVAL: DITA Help Technologies

Guide

Hi all --

The DITA Help Subcommittee submits for your review and approval Release

1.0 of our DITA Help Technologies Guide. We appreciate that members of

the TC are swamped with DITA 1.2 specification work, but we hope that we

could get your approval of this document in two weeks time (Tuesday,

March 10). We plan to update this Guide every 3 - 4 months to keep it

current.

I have attached a PDF2 version of the document with Acrobat Reader

commenting enabled. MS HTML Help and TOCJSBIS versions are available at:

http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita-help/documents.php

Check out the nifty OASIS-branded HTML that Tony Self (Help Subcommittee

chair) has integrated with his WinANT tool.

If someone with write privileges to the Adoption TC email list could

forward this email and attachment, we would appreciate it.

Thanx,

Stan Doherty

DITA Help Subcommittee, Secretary

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