Re: [dita] Update/request from the LwDITA subcommittee

I think that a new committee note is well worth considering. The
      TC can publish a committee note much faster than a specification,
      and a public review is optional rather than required.

    
Authoring a committee note still will require some technical
      writing, DITA, and Git skills -- but much less than a
      specification. The necessary stylesheets are built and I created a
      template last year that serves well as a starter set for a
      committee note.

    

    
The subcommittee should discuss this and let the TC know if it
      wants to proceed with a committee note. I'll need the suggested
      name of the committee note in order to request the starter
      document from OASIS that lists the URLs and other information that
      is needed for the cover page.

    

    
Best,

      Kris

      

      Kristen James Eberlein

      Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee

      Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting

      www.eberleinconsulting.com

      +1 919 622-1501; kriseberlein (skype)

      

    

    
On 2/6/2020 2:57 PM, Michael Priestley
      wrote:

    

    
      
      I think there
        are
        two issues:

      

      1) A lack of
        writing
        resource on the LWDITA SC at the moment, especially technically
        focused
        writing (making use of conrefs etc.)

      2) A tactical
        need for an MDITA-focused update, which doesn't need to be a
        formal spec
        but does not need to be updated since what we released in the
        committee
        note.

      

      We haven't
        produced
        new content about MDITA, but there is work happening outside the
        SC, which
        we need to evolve and incorporate. The challenge is how and
        where to publish
        that work. If we go through the spec process for that work,
        there are two
        bottlenecks: our skilled writing resource, and the TC timeline.
        Alternatively,
        it might make sense for us to focus on producing an
        MDITA-focused committee
        note, that addresses our tactical need and bypasses (only for
        now, and
        only for this non-spec deliverable) the spec process we've set
        up.

      

        Michael Priestley, Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM)

        Information Architect, Digital Experience

        

      

      

      

      From:
               Kristen
        James Eberlein <>

      To:
               DITA
        TC <>

      Date:
               2020/02/06
        02:10 PM

      Subject:
               [EXTERNAL]
        Re: [dita] Update/request from the LwDITA subcommittee

      Sent
        by:        <>

      

      

      

      Hey, Carlos. 

      I think the TC set out reasonable
        expectations
        for XDITA, and I personally did the work (approximately 60+
        hours) of implementing
        the reuse. I also set up the bookmap for the LwDITA and
        published the one
        and only PDF of the draft LwDITA spec that was posted to Kavi
        last year.

      Has the SC produced any new content
        about
        MDITA? Done any new work on the LwDITA spec? When I look at the
        GitHub
        repository, I see no work has been done since October 2019, and
        only sparse
        work between July (when you and I last worked together) and
        October 2019.

      I honestly can't see what more the
        DITA
        TC can do. Robert Anderson and I, as DITA 2.0 spec editors, set
        up a regular
        monthly meeting with you and Alan Houser (no longer a LwDITA
        spec editor).
        It doesn't look like many (or any?) of our suggestions were
        attempted,
        but our suggested starting point would be the same today:
        Prototype a few
        element-reference topics to see how you can handle HDITA and
        MDITA considerations.

      Developing a specification is hard
        work,
        and unfortunately there is no way to circumvent that.

      Best,

        Kris

        

        Kristen James Eberlein

        Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee

        Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting

        www.eberleinconsulting.com

        +1 919 622-1501; kriseberlein (skype)

      

      On 2/6/2020 12:23 PM, Carlos Evia
        wrote:

      Dear DITA TC members,

        

        The Lightweight DITA subcommittee is asking its parent
        organization, the
        DITA technical committee, for help.

        Simply put, the Lightweight DITA subcommittee does not have the
        resources
        (mostly human) to produce a spec under the workflow set by the
        TC last
        year. That workflow, as some TC members probably remember,
        requires that
        every LwDITA component reference must reuse a majority of its
        content from
        its counterpart topic in the 2.0 spec, including attributes,
        shortdesc,
        usage information, and rendering expectations. While this
        workflow could
        be implemented for XDITA with intense conditional tagging, it
        creates serious
        problems for HDITA and particularly MDITA.

        And MDITA is the main reason for the Lightweight DITA spec:
        there is documented
        user demand for an authoritative OASIS-approved document that
        specifies
        mappings of DITA to Markdown. Companies and groups are already
        using MDITA
        in production, and confusion and redundancy are in place because
        there
        is no actual spec, and some are following Jarno's Markdown DITA
        syntax
        reference as that authoritative resource. Others use our
        committee note
        or even my book. Without an OASIS-approved MDITA spec, there's
        no standard
        mapping from DITA to Markdown and users and tool developers have
        to patch
        implementations to accommodate many approaches for doing
        DITA-like Markdown.

        I hope that we can discuss this at a TC meeting and revise or
        develop a
        strategy that allows the Lightweight DITA subcommittee to
        accomplish its
        purpose with OASIS.

      

      Best,

      

      Carlos

      -- 

      Carlos Evia, Ph.D.

      Associate Professor of Communication

      Virginia Tech

      Blacksburg, VA 24061-0112

      (540)200-8201

      

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