DITA Tech Comm Subcommittee -- Minues 2 May 2011

JoAnn T. Hackos, PhD
President
Comtech Services Inc.
710 Kipling Street, Suite 400
Denver, CO 80215

skype joannhackos



 Minutes for DITA Technical Communication Subcommittee meeting
 2 May 2011, 11 am to 12 noon ET

 Roll call 11:00 - Quorum

 Attending: Gershon Joseph, Kristen James Eberlein, PaulG, Mariana Alupului, JoAnn Hackos,
  Bruce Nevin, David Helfinstine, Debbie Novick, Darryl Tewes

 Regrets: Rob Hanna

 Next 16 May 2011, 11:00am to 12:00pm ET

 Approved Minutes:
 None. Review at next meeting

 Brief review of Open Action items
 Completed action items: Gershon developed troubleshooting use cases. JoAnn completed
 the HP problem-solving module examples

 Gershon completed wiki pages on troubleshooting and change control
 Action: add use cases and HP examples to the wiki page on troubleshooting

 Business

 1. ITEM: Release Management

--
JoAnn provide link to the release management webinar

 	Discussion of the role of release management in the DITA specification. Is this

a CMS vendor issue or a DITA issue. How do we mark up branches and merging in
 	DITA?

 	How for the CMS vendors handle this from a technical perspective? namespaces?

	Depends on architecture of CMS. Relational databases keep data outside of the
 	XML file; rely on database metadata. Can merge changed content back if stay
 	within a single CMS. What happens if you work across CMSs? Content is no longer
 	siloed -- have multi-vendor systems working in companies.

 	Need versioning information within the XML content if want to work between
 	multiple vendor systems, including OEM customers.

 	Gershon is doing feature profiling on the current version.

 	Bruce -- interoperability problems with metadata for versioning.

 	Start by defining the use cases. Managing versioning information.

 	ACTION: create new wiki page for release management use cases (Gershon). JoAnn
 	add Siemens, Gershon add Cisco. others invited to add their own use cases.

 	Darryl Tewes--low level issue in his organization; pre-CMS level. What about a
 	path from pre-CMS to a CMS; do you lose all your metadata. Small content set
 	at this time and releases are not yet too complex.

 	Share the use cases with the DITA TC and the DITA Adoption TC.

 	Kris Eberlein--can we tackle this issue vs. troubleshooting

 2. ITEM

--
Troubleshooting documentation

 	JoAnn sent the HP problem-solving modules. Gershon sent use cases.
 	ACTION: Everyone should review.

 	Some discussion of the HP examples. Some embedded cross-references in these
 	examples.

 	Kris--the IBM troubleshooting specialization handles cross-references through
 	a Rel Table.

 	What is the troubleshooting check refers to only one of the checks and solutions?

 	How reusable are troubleshooting topics? Part of a future best practice.

 	Do we need a best practices document on embedded links vs rel table?

 	Is this an issue to work with Adoption TC?

 3. ITEM

--
Kris will set up a Linking wiki page

 Adjourn 12:00 noon ET.