dita — archive

[Robert Anderson]

Hi Su-Laine, Earlier versions of the subject scheme have been in use within IBM for many years. Those versions have gone through small changes over time, leading to the version that was proposed to (and approved by) the TC. If it is taken out of the spec or made non-normative, I do not see why any new people would see a reason to try it out, meaning that we will be in exactly the same situation in the future -- IBM will contribute the proposal just as it is now. Until then, people outside of IBM will continue looking for similar functions and will come up with alternate implementations that do not work together. Regarding DITA 1.3, I will be thrilled to have a better process. But, we should not impose that process after the fact on one specific proposal from DITA 1.2. We established a process for DITA 1.2 proposals, and that process was followed with this just as it was with other proposals. * The initial proposal was made, and the TC approved moving on to the full proposal (as it did with most items). * The full proposal was written, sent to the TC, and approved for inclusion in DITA 1.2. * The proposal was written up in the spec, which was sent out for review. For this item in particular, all of the content has been available for review in the language spec since fall 2008. * The proposal was implemented in one tool (the DITA Open Toolkit) in May/June of 2009 * Only minor changes resulted from reviews of the language spec, and there was no new information in the three official drafts last year. At any of those points, TC members could have objected to this item as a whole, or to individual points. There was certainly a lot of discussion at the first two points, but in the end the proposal passed. We've said at many points in the last two years that the only changes we would still accept to DITA 1.2 were bug fixes or low-impact changes to new features (but only when the change was critical and could not wait for 1.3). I personally feel that by this very late point it is too late to remove an entire new item, especially when up to this now the only review comments on that item have been relatively minor; the removal of this entire item would certainly constitute a major change to the language specification as it has existed for over a year. For the specific item you mentioned that seems to have been dropped from the proposal - you are right that it was missed in the spec write-up. My thought on that is, if nobody noticed that item was missing up to this point, then it stays out, particularly since it is not required by any of the rest of the proposal. The TC can address it in 1.3, using whatever new approval process is in place. Robert D Anderson IBM Authoring Tools Development Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit "Su-Laine Yeo"