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Subject: Meeting Minutes 6/15/2004 -- DITA Technical Committee
Meeting Minutes 6/15/2004 -- DITA Technical Committee
*** Please see Action Items and Decision Summary at the end ***
** Agenda **
------------
1. Roll call
2. Review/approve minutes from 18 May
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200405/msg00034.html
and 7 June
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200406/msg00017.html
3. Review yesterday's DITA Briefing 4 (specialization). The
remaining sessions are:
- June 21 -- Reuse and conditional processing
- June 28 -- Lifecycle
4. Begin defining the titles, outlines for the initial
specifications (see Michael Priestley's outline at
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200406/msg00019.html)
5. AOB? (Bruce Esrig, were you looking for comments on your
notes about relationship tables?)
** Minutes **
-------------
1. Roll call
- Don took roll; yes we do have quorum
- Voting members present:
- Indi Liepa
- Eliot Kimber
- Jerry Smith
- Robin Cover
- Stanley Doherty
- Mary McRae
- Dave Schell
- Paul Grosso
- Michael Priestley
- France Baril
- JoAnn Hackos
- Paul Antonov
- Seraphim Larsen
- Bruce Esrig
- Bruce Sesnovich
- Sharon Veach
- Shawn Jordan (new member as of last session)
- Don Day (chair)
- Observers:
- Eric Sirois
- Prospective Members:
- Mike Wethington
- Rob Frankland (new member at the end of this session)
2. Review/approve minutes
- 18 May --
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200405/msg00034.html
Approved.
- 7 June --
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200406/msg00017.html
Approved.
3. Review yesterday's DITA Briefing 4 (specialization).
- Someone said it was one of the best presentations, as far
as information presented. But SameTime couldn't see what
Michael was doing, so it wasn't as useful as it could have
been.
- Bruce: Good detail, but not enough higher-level overview to
understand where he was going with the detail.
- Sharon Veach from Sun -- It looked like Object-Oriented
Programming (OOP), which made it easy to follow.
- Michael: Yes, but there are some key differences. In
OOP you have encapsulation of data and behavior in
a single object; in DITA the data and behavior
(format) are separated, and you have to get them to
interact in a useful way. Also you don't have the
same kind of "specialization" in OOP. Thus DITA
borrows some concepts and methodology from OOP but
there are different constraints that resulted in
different design decisions.
- Don Day: In regard to XSLT processing, there is no
inheritance of methods, per se. To add a new behavior
to an existing processing template, you have to copy
the template to an override and add the new behavior
to the existing code. This mimics inheritance of
behaviors in methods.
- Don Day: Were people able to keep up with the steps that
Michael was going through? Shall we have some discussion
on tools that could make this process easier?
- Is there some kind of delta editor that can understand
DITA specialization rules?
- Shall we add this as an issue for further exploration?
- Preferred naming descriptions? Are there guidelines
posted anywhere?
- Michael: The SIGDoc paper has some examples, but
doesn't provide explicit naming conventions.
- Was the briefing audio recorded?
- Don: Yes, will send the info to the list.
- Bruce: He would like to make a request to go beyond naming
conventions, and have a formal syntax that captures the
specialization structure.
- Don would like this to be highlighted as important --
we should revisit this later. Let's keep it on the
"Issues" list.
- Shawn Jordan of BYU: Question about general
extensibility. He's finding that general extensibility
would be very useful -- that is, he'd like to create his
own independent elements that are not necessarily
descendents of the topic element. He'd like to run his
ideas past someone at some point.
- Don says Erik Hennum would like to discuss this with
him at some point, but Erik's not here today.
- Don recommends that Shawn post this to the TC list.
Are we ready to bring this into the general meeting as
a topic for discussion?
- Michael: We didn't include that capability, because
it's crossing a very important line when you cannot
map back up to the topic element. This breaks the
interoperability. But otherwise it sounds reasonable
to Michael, and Shawn is on the right track, but it
needs further discussion.
- It's an urgent question for Shawn, because he is
already using this variant of DITA to do a real
(urgent) project.
- Indi: They aren't doing it this way; they are mapping
everything back to Topic.
- Don: Shawn should take this situation to the list.
- Bruce Esrig: Is there a need for a type-checking
committee? The extensibility issues may challenge the
algorithms that check that you have a valid instance.
- Don: It is not within the scope of the 1.0
specification. We need to identify who the
special-interest people are, who want this kind of
extensibility.
- The remaining briefing sessions are:
- June 21 -- Reuse and conditional processing
- June 28 -- Lifecycle
4. Begin defining the titles, outlines for the initial
specifications (see Michael Priestley's outline at
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200406/msg00019.html)
- Michael will provide a new draft that incorporates the
ideas from the discussion. There will be three main
specification "documents" for 1.0 --
- DITA overview
- DITA markup (including items 1-3 from Michael's
current draft)
- DITA specialization (including items 4-6)
- Don: Does anyone want to take ownership of any of these
modules and help Michael write them?
- France Baril -- She can help with the processing module
(item 6)
- Don: Let's continue this discussion next week. This will
be an ongoing discussion until we complete the 1.0 spec.
5. AOB? (Bruce Esrig, were you looking for comments on your
notes about relationship tables?)
- We didn't get to this.
6. Next week's briefing -- Can anyone provide a "life cycle case
study?" (I.e., anything where we can discuss the whole
thing, from design of a system to delivery of documents to
end users?). If anyone has ideas for this, please contact
Michael.
** Summary of Decisions **
--------------------------
- No decisions made.
** Action Required **
---------------------
014 Don Day -- Don will send out a list of all the remaining
briefings subjects, with a specific request for people to
submit questions ahead of time.
015 Don Day -- Don to post a URL to the list, pertinent to the
discussion of naming conflicts and namespaces. (cf. Issue
#002).
016 Don Day -- Slides for the briefings must be made available
well in advance, just in case people aren't able to connect
to SameTime or WebEx.
017 Shawn Jordan -- Post to the TC list his ideas about general
extensibility and the creation of new elements not
necessarily descended from the Topic element.
018 Michael Priestley -- Post a new draft of the initial
specification outline to the TC list, incorporating the
ideas from the discussion on 6/15/04.
019 All -- Discuss with Michael Priestley if you are interested
in helping with any sections of the DITA specification.
020 All -- If you have a "case study" on a complete DITA system
-- from system design through to implementation and actual
delivery of documents to end users -- please let Michael
know so this can be presented at one of the briefing
sessions.
** Issues to be Resolved **
---------------------------
001 Bruce Esrig -- How does specialization interact with maps?
002 Bruce Sesnovich -- How do we resolve name conflicts? (E.g.
two people create two different specializations off the same
parent topic, but give them the same name).
003 Don Day -- Let's explore tools that can make the
specialization process easier (that is, help automate it --
it is simple but tedious). Maybe there are vendors who
would be interested in working with us on this.
004 Bruce -- We need to go beyond naming conventions, and have
a formal syntax that captures the specialization structure.
<END>
___________________________________________________________
Seraphim Larsen ICG Technical Publications
Sr. Technical Writer Intel Corporation
(480) 552-6504 Chandler, AZ
The content of this message is my personal opinion only.
Although I am an employee of Intel, the statements I make
here in no way represent Intel's position on the issue, nor
am I authorized to speak on behalf of Intel on this matter.
___________________________________________________________
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