dita — archive

My increasing concerns about LwDITA and template-based specialization

From: Rob Hanna <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2017 16:34:00 -0000

I feel quite strongly that it is important to have a non-proprietary specialization mechanism available in the LwDITA spec if class-based specialization is not supported. If we are targeting SMEs as a primary user of LwDITA than I believe it is important to have the capability to present SMEs with a tagging vocabulary that is familiar to the SME and that provides adequate guidance during authoring. This has always been the strongest argument for specialization in my opinion. We shouldn’t be targeting the specialization mechanism at the SME where simplification is the main goal. The SME will always be able to create templates for authoring without the need for specialization. Specialization is always going to require a thorough understanding of information architecture regardless of how simple it is to perform specialization. Just because it is simpler doesn’t mean that it should be a common task in most authoring environments. In my opinion, the development of new tags and structures to support specialization is no different than supporting the DITAval vocabulary for conditional processing. My two cents… Cheers, Rob Hanna From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Carlos Evia Sent: January 19, 2017 9:21 AM To: Kristen James Eberlein <[email protected]> Cc: DITA TC <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [dita] My increasing concerns about LwDITA and template-based specialization Dear Kris and all, I don't have strong feelings about the specialization mechanism being a part of LwDITA. I am used to it because I have seen it as a component of our work in the subcommittee since day one. To be honest, the promise of simplified specialization is sweet, but I have previously expressed concern about the spaghetti topics that users could create following the template-based mechanism. We have seen a demo of those with the marketing draft, which probably is useful for its authors, but a little too complex to be called lightweight. Don pointed out that users can create such spaghetti topic types now with DITA 1.x's specialization mechanism, and that is right... but those don't come with the "lightweight" label. I defer defense of the specialization mechanism to Michael as its original designer. I support Michael's decision as his co-chair, but keep my concerns about the lightweight nature of topic types created under this specification/tool. Best, Carlos -- Carlos Evia, Ph.D. Director of Professional and Technical Writing Associate Professor of Technical Communication Department of English Center for Human-Computer Interaction Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA 24061-0112 (540)200-8201 On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 8:14 AM, Kristen James Eberlein < [email protected] > wrote: I think we all would like to specialization easier to do. But ... I'm not sure that adding new attributes and elements in the spec in order to drive tool development is an appropriate thing to do. I think it would 100% appropriate if someone wants to build and sell an application, and include with the application directions on how to create an annotated XML file that can processed to get a monolithic DTD. Or have an Open Source project which produces a plug-in that oXygen will bundle with their application. However, I truly don't see an argument for adding new elements and attributes to the specification in order to develop one-time artifacts (the templates) that can be fed into tooling to autogenerate DTDs I'm going to need a whole lot more convincing. It just seems wrong. -- Best, Kris Kristen James Eberlein Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting www.eberleinconsulting.com +1 919 682-2290 ; kriseberlein (skype) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that generates this mail. Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at: https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php