I might also add that, as a TC, we make
proposals to OASIS, but our recommendations have to then be approved by
the OASIS membership at large. The more useful and widely applicable
a standard is, the more scrutiny it gets during member review. So it's
important to really understand the implications of our designs, and be
ready to defend our decisions, before we approve a draft.
These are complex issues, and we've
been dealing with a large number of them, in addition to our 'day jobs'.
It's not surprising that some of the implications have taken a while to
become as clear to the TC membership at large as they were to the original
designers. It doesn't mean we want to reopen the decisions, but it
does mean that we need to understand and document very clearly our reasons
for making ones that may turn out to be controversial.
just my $.02
nancy
____
Nancy Harrison
IBM Rational Software
Phone: 781-676-2535
Don Day/Austin/IBM@IBMUS
08/10/2006 08:15 AM
To
Michael Priestley <>
cc
Chris Wong <>,
Dana Spradley <>, ,
JoAnn Hackos <>
Subject
Re: [dita] Reapproving approved
proposals
I echo my TC Chairly endorsement to this statement
by Michael:
> this should not be a precedent for generally reopening the issues.
By selecting a subset of initial proposals for DITA 1.1 and then having
a
"design approval" stage for those, we had hoped to make some
of the work go
in parallel and then stitch the components into the final deliverable.
It
has not been a perfect process by any means, and we'll change some things
for 1.2 for sure. The main thing I would change next time we do this is
to
get everyone better engaged in the design reviews early on.
In response to Chris's question, "What does it mean to approve something,
if it can come apart at any time?", all I can offer is that at the
time
this item was being approved, I know that I only gave it a shallow read,
and did not play the scenarios back from a user's viewpoint, or a coder's
viewpoint. Perhaps that is where others were at as well. But
since we are
still in a first draft stage of writing the 1.1 spec, I'd suggest that
the
index range design approval is not so much coming apart as getting some
preliminary review comments just in time for careful consideration before
there's no turning back. What I heard from today's first session
was a
good level of analysis from everyone. Insight on hard technical problems
often comes slowly--I wish we had had this discussion months ago.
OASIS leaves committee process up to each TC, since each team will have
its
own best way of doing things. Once the public draft is out and we
begin
our 1.2 work, we will start with some sessions on Lessons Learned where
we
can record our mistakes and make some corrective course changes for the
next stage in our roadmap.
Regards,
--
Don Day
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
IBM Lead DITA Architect
Email:
11501 Burnet Rd. MS9033E015, Austin TX 78758
Phone: +1 512-838-8550
T/L: 678-8550
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
--T.S. Eliot
Michael Priestley
<.
com>
To
Dana Spradley
08/09/2006 04:29
<>
PM
cc
Chris Wong
<>,
Dana Spradley
<>,
,
JoAnn
Hackos
<>
Subject
Re: [dita]
Reapproving approved
proposals
>Do you mean we should worry about work done by teams in advance of
final
design approval?
There's a fine semantic distinction here - we gave design approval to these
features some time ago, in a formal TC vote. What reason would a
development team have for thinking those designs weren't final? I certainly
thought they were final.
If we're on the same page, and we can get approval on a design that meets
Paul's concerns with minimal breakage to the existing proposal, then great.
I'm glad you agree that this should not be a precedent for generally
reopening the issues.
Michael Priestley
IBM DITA Architect and Classification Schema PDT Lead
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25
Dana Spradley
<dana.spradley@ora
cle.com>
To
Dana Spradley <>
08/09/2006 05:04
cc
PM
Michael Priestley/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA, Chris Wong
<>, ,
JoAnn Hackos <>
Subject
Re: [dita] Reapproving approved proposals
What a minute - maybe I missed something in your message Michael:
We are missing committed dates with teams that have invested considerable
development team in a design they thought was stable.
Do you mean we should worry about work done by teams in advance of final
design approval?
--Dana
Dana Spradley wrote:
I think we're saying the same thing, Michael, in different ways: let's
bring this to a vote, and if the design fails to earn a majority, let's
drop it and move on.
I don't want to revisit the issue already compromised on - but just recall
it, to remind the TC that some of us never considered this a very important
enhancement anyway.
Michael Priestley wrote:
Given that each feature has been approved by a majority vote of the TC,
should it require a majority vote of the TC to re-open? Otherwise the
original vote has no meaning.
I think it's important that this particular design revisit is managed
quickly and without it becoming a precedent that tosses out our existing
investment in process. If the subteam can't come to an agreement by
Tuesday's meeting I think it should go to a vote as to whether the design
should be opened at all. I do think Paul has legitimate concerns, but I
also think this shouldn't open the door to revisit every compromise we've
managed to achieve in the last year.
We are missing committed dates with teams that have invested considerable
development team in a design they thought was stable. Our credibility with
our development community is on the line.
Michael Priestley
IBM DITA Architect and Classification Schema PDT Lead
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25
Dana Spradley
<dana.spradley@oracle.
com>
To
Dana Spradley <>
08/09/2006 12:25 PM
cc
JoAnn Hackos <>,
Chris Wong <>,
Subject
Re: [dita] Reapproving approved proposals
Actually, on second thought, and as a matter of principle, I don't know
-
when it comes to approving a design, maybe we should be able to resurrect
old objections if the final design doesn't satisfy and instead begs
all
these old questions over again.
Nothing's in the standard until the design is approved - and even then,
at
some later date we could all decide we did something wrong, and deprecate
the solution until it can be eliminated from the standard.
--Dana
Dana Spradley wrote:
I agree. If opposing this innovation had been important to me, I should
have done so before we approved the proposal.
On the other hand, I would like to question Chris's notion that since
topics appear in the table of contents, they shouldn't appear in the index.
The index provides an alternative, alphabetical method for looking up
topics of interest - instead of going over the TOC with a fine tooth comb
to find what you're interested in.
And I think that may turn out to be how many authors end up using the index
range feature - to index entire topics.
Should the implemention give them some easy method to accomplish that -
by
inserting one element instead of two?
--Dana
JoAnn Hackos wrote:
Hi Chris et al.
We're just speculating about the concept of page range. I'm sure we all
continue to agree that page ranges are appropriate for the model. I was
part of the earlier debate, as you know.
Let's concentrate on the mechanism. However, it is still a good idea to
advocate best practices in white papers on the indexing issue, just as
we
have tried to do with the Translation SC's best practice on indexing. You
don't have to do it this way, but it might help.
Let's all focus on the mechanism at this point.
JoAnn
JoAnn T. Hackos, PhD
President
Comtech Services, Inc.
710 Kipling Street, Suite 400
Denver CO 80215
303-232-7586
From: Chris Wong [mailto:]
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2006 6:37 AM
To:
Subject: [dita] Reapproving approved proposals
This is more of a procedural question here, touched off by our reopening
the indexterm debate. Months ago, we spent weeks debating, compromising
and
writing up proposals, DTDs and language reference material for indexing
enhancements. We voted twice to approve this. But now the whole thing is
reopened for debate and it looks like everything is up for grabs again.
What does it mean to approve something, if it can come apart at any time?
Chris
