Hi --
I agree with your assessment, Joann. If DITA initiates receive the impression that they will need to know a significant percentage of the DITA spec to do their jobs, they glaze over and often walk away (drop the course). If I provide then with the following, they seem to calm down and stay on board:
1. Some reassurance that "basic" DITA proficiency involves only a small percentage of the
complete DITA specification.
2. Some short-term learning path . . . eating the proverbial elephant one spoonful at a time.
That said, I found that some percentage (25%-ish) of my DITA students never "get it" -- no matter what you present or how you present it. I suspect that "complexity" is a codeword for other issues.
Stan
Stan Doherty
Director, Technical Publications
Verivue Inc.
Westford MA
-----Original Message-----
From: "Joann Hackos" []
Date: 12/06/2010 12:03 PM
To: "Bruce Nevin (bnevin)" ,
Subject: Re: [dita-help] complexity
We want to introduce this topic for the next Adoption TC meeting. Please count on joining the meeting. Perhaps we should ask users for their thoughts on this issue. When you teach DITA, you can easily see how overwhelmed people seem to be. However, if they were learning desktop publishing from scratch, they might react in the same one.
JoAnn
On 12/6/10 9:51 AM, "Bruce Nevin (bnevin)" <> wrote:
What is the basis of the perception of complexity?
From: ian balanza-davis [mailto:]
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 10:34 AM
To: Goolsby, Chris; ;
Subject: Re: [dita-help] Help Features in DITA 1.3
Greetings all
I would concur that the context hooks should be built into the core content model, but I think we would need to be mindful of the scope of the hooks to ensure some form of uniqueness in the final output.
I am not so sure about the window definitions. To me these feel more like a processing requirement, and I am not sure that it is good practice to place format-specific information in the source. (Pretending "print" does not exist on topicrefs...)
I agree that the standard is looking complex, and I suspect can only get more so.
As an aside, I work with SMEs rather than (classically-defined) authors who found version 1.1 complex. You can imagine how they will react to 1.2
Ian
From: "Goolsby, Chris" <>
To: ;
Sent: Mon, 6 December, 2010 14:46:47
Subject: RE: [dita-help] Help Features in DITA 1.3
Hi all.
I agree. The base topic types work fine for UA. We just need to tweak a
few things to add some hooks for UA delivery. I agree with the community
that DITA is getting a little complex.
Regards.
Chris Goolsby
PTC
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Self [mailto:]
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 1:33 AM
To:
Subject: [dita-help] Help Features in DITA 1.3
Greetings colleagues
Now that 1.2 has been released, we have to start thinking about 1.3. You
will probably recall that the Help Subcommittee was established to make
recommendations for 1.3; it wasn't anticipated that 1.3 would be so far
away.
So far, we have proposals for spec changes to better handle context
hooks,
and window definitions.
We have discussed in the past the possibility of a specialisation for
integrated or embedded user assistance content.
There has been some negative feedback from the community about the
perceived
complexity of 1.2, with new information types, constrained versions of
some
types, and a (perceived) mushrooming in the number of elements.
My feeling is that the context hook and window definitions should be
built
into the base content model. My feeling is that we should not have a
specialised information type for UA, mainly because I don't think the
community is demanding such a thing.
What do you all think?
Tony Self
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that
generates this mail. Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at:
https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that
generates this mail. Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at:
https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php
