dita — archive

Fwd: Notes from our 30 September call about SVN/build/packages/etc.

From: Nancy Harrison
To: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 17:48:00 -0000

fyi, minutes from 30 September meeting on DITA 1.3 infrastructure planning ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Kristen James Eberlein < [email protected] > Date: Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 3:39 PM Subject: Notes from our 30 September call about SVN/build/packages/etc. To: Robert Anderson < [email protected] >, Stan Doherty < [email protected] >, Nancy Harrison < [email protected] > Present: Robert, Kris, Stan Agenda Started with laundry list from Kris's May 28 e-mail to the list. N eed for volunteers and a distributed work load Kris reiterated this; Stan suggested that quantifying how much work and time was involved in specific items might help. Order in which things need to be done Some items really have strong interconnections and inter-dependencies; the following items are intertwined and should be tackled first Consensus on DITA 1.3 packages Are these base, technical content, and learning & training (everything)? Are we clear about why we are doing this? (Reducing page count, reducing appearance of complexity ...) Information design for DITA specification versions Information design for Contains and Contains by tables Separate publication? Appendix? In-topic? Working DITA-OT plug-in for producing the OASIS-styled output formats Build scripts Rationale for D ITA 1.3 packaging Robert: People are making claims about DITA complexity by pointing to the length of the PDF. Yes, some people still use the PDF; that was clear from the e-mail threads on the TC e-mail list and dita-users which Kris started earlier in the year. Would splitting the content back to arch spec and lang ref do any good? Contains & Contains by tables Robert wants to avoid regenerating the tables before there is RelaxNG from which to build the tables. Could prototype using DITA 1.2 source (but without changing the rows in the table) or might be able to prototype using the intermediate files used to generate the DITA 1.2 tables. Kris suggested that we might need two versions of prototypes -- low-fidelity/earlier and high-fidelity/later -- if we do not change the table rows. DITA-OT plug-in for generating OASIS-styled output (Some of this discussion happened before Stan and Nancy joined the call.) The plug-in used for building DITA 1.2 spec is fragile and hacked together. It was build piece-meal (hacked together) by multiple people working sequentially: Eliot, Seth Park, and finally Robert. Kris thinks that there are some fundamental structural issues. It does not work with recent versions of the toolkit, nor does the plug-in handle filtering with the older version of the DITA-OT. Tools These items can be done later Licenses for PDF rendering engines (XEP and Antenna House, although Kris may have already handled Antenna House Tool for generating Contains and Contains by tables (dependent on design; dependent on RelaxNG proposal and work) Tool for zipping up source files for DITA spec (Samalander DITA Packager is a possibility) Review tool (CrocDocs, something Eliot mentioned, Mekon's DITAweb ...) Editorial work The following items from the original list fall into this category: Incorporate DITA 1.2 errata (DONE) Handle items from the "Spec fixes and clarifications" Trello board; this is the board to which Nancy should add any doc fixes/bugs Version control Our SVN repository is a mess; we need to do clean-up and establish some conventions and processes. This can happen after early prototyping and design work, but not too much later. Non-infrastructure work Edit and rewrite sections of specification that have been noted as needing this work: Edit "Configuration, specialization, and constraints" Redo Coverage of subjectScheme and classification Redo Coverage of keys Work that involves the entire TC Conduct internal TC reviews of DITA 1.3 content (How many reviews? How should we best organize them?) Conduct final internal review of DITA 1.3 packages Action items Stan: Research what we could do with the current repository. Robert: Prototypes for Contains and Contains by tables Robert: Look at current plug-in and assess time/effort to fix it Nancy: Look through minutes for last 18 months and make sure that Trello boards contain all necessary cards for bug and doc fixes Nancy: Get current plug-in running with DITA 1.2 source Kris: Upload current plug-in to SVN Kris: Continue with building early prototypes of base, technical content, and L&T versions of the spec ? : Review e-mail threads about "What version of the DITA 1.2 spec do you use and why?" (TC list + dita-users) -- Best, Kris Kristen James Eberlein Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting Co-chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee Charter member, OASIS DITA Adoption Committee www.eberleinconsulting.com +1 919 682-2290 ; kriseberlein (skype) -- _____________ Nancy Harrison Infobridge Solutions [email protected]