Proposal: Formation of DocBook SubCommittee for eLearning

Folks,

 

As with the DocBook SubCommittee for Publishers, 

the OASIS DocBook Technical Committee has authorized the 

formation of subcommittees for the purpose of creating
official 

customization layers to support the needs of various
domains. These 

customizations are officially "DocBook variants",
but also drive 

requirements back to core DocBook.

 

We have a tremendous opportunity to support the future of
education with

 the formation of a DocBook SubCommittee for eLearning.

 

The charter for this SC may include support for:

 

- Enabling creation of Online Learning and Technical
Training

- SCORM-compliant output

- Other forms of educational publications (such as
textbooks)

 

The charter will NOT include support for:

 

- layout-intensive publishing

 

 The first step is to gather interested parties via the

 

<mailto:> list and
from industry contacts.

 

 With three or more interested parties, the following
guideline has been established at OASIS:

 

 "If you're planning on starting up a
subcommittee, there's no need to 

create a discussion list -- typically that's done to tighten
up scope, 

etc. before submitting a charter for a new Technical
Committee.

 

All that's necessary to get started is to organize the
respective 

interested parties, put together a statement of work, and
submit it to 

the TC for approval. And someone needs to volunteer to take
on the role 

of chair. Of course all participants need to be OASIS
members."

 

I see this as a tremendous opportunity for those in the
DocBook community who are 

interested in producing eLearning content and for those
already using 

DocBook for technical publications, but some other solution
for 

education content. Adopters will also be able to take
advantage of the 

robust tool and community support that DocBook already
enjoys. It's also 

a tremendous opportunity for DocBook to garner additional
industry adoption.

 

In fact, an enterprising DocBook user has already donated a
DocBook to 

SCORM open source project (docbook2scorm) on Google Code,
which has had 

730 downloads to date. This demonstrates a strong interest
in using 

DocBook for eLearning, even though DocBook currently does
not provide 

explicit support for it!

 

The subcommittee effort would provide additional content
models as part 

of the official DocBook variant to provide a much more rich
eLearning 

experience.

 

Please let me know if you are interested in participating in
this effort.

 

Thanks and best regards,

 

--Scott

 

 

  
  

  
  
  
   

    
    
Scott
    Hudson

    
    
 
   

   

    
    
Senior
    XML Architect

    
    
 
   

   

    
    
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