dita — archive

Fwd: Comments on the DITA TC charter

From: Kristen Eberlein <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2021 15:43:00 -0000

Comments from Frank Best, Kris Kristen James Eberlein Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee OASIS Distinguished Contributor Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting LLC www.eberleinconsulting.com +1 919 622-1501; kriseberlein (skype) -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: RE: Comments on the DITA TC charter Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2021 18:13:56 +0000 From: Wegmann, Frank <[email protected]> To: Kristen James Eberlein <[email protected]> , Chet Ensign <[email protected]> , Dawn Stevens <[email protected]> CC: Gershon Joseph <[email protected]> , Nancy Harrison <[email protected]> Thanks for everybody’s comments so far. I apologize for mine being a bit lengthy and late. I still have the feeling that I haven’t gone as deep as necessary to see exactly what we need to do to make the charter fit for 2022 and beyond. My general impression, also from reading Dawn’s and Gershon’s comments is that we already found some areas that need revision without tearing apart the gist of the charter, which is the purpose and architecture of DITA as originally envisioned. But that could pave the way towards a coordinated revision of the text, identifying the areas for revision and agreeing on contents attributing to the role that DITA plays today. Please find below my more specific comments: Historical Context ================== This is still the original charter to go with creating the DITA TC, as communicated on March 29, 2004. So, there are some sections that are relevant only in their historical context and the fact that it was meant to be the charter of a new group. Like: - The explicit relation to the DocBook TC: The work of this TC will differ from similar efforts such as DocBook because of * broader scope, inasmuch as DITA applies to more areas than just technical manuals * more specific scope, inasmuch as DITA applies to topic-oriented information rather than all technical manuals The bullet points still hold, of course, but they need no longer be explicitly related to DocBook. - Also, this was a worthwile mention at the time of founding the TC: This committee builds upon the foundation established by the work of IBM on DITA. Not undermining the IBM origins, but DITA is an established technology in its own right now, and this is a sentence to deserve its place in historical work on DITA, but no longer is useful after almost 17 years now. - Actions that were targeted at the future or immediate practice of the committee work: The TC will create specifications for the Darwin Information Typing Architecture . No, it's done multiple time. In fact, as later pointed out, it is one of the foremost tasks of the TC to create and maintain specifications for DITA. Within three months of the first meeting, [...] Yes, we're past that. are optimized for navigation and search This is true, but no longer the focus. Mobility is more important (see below), and at that point I agree with comments by both, Gershon and Dawn. may consider the creation of subcommittees [...] Been there, happened multiple times. I think, the section on subcommittees needs to be revised to describe their role nowadays, along with an expectation of the scope of future SCs. Scope of Work =============== I think, the basic message is still fully valid, because the DITA architecture is unique in the XML world, and the concept of information types is as true and important now as it was in 2004 (or 1998 in the IBM labs...). So is the DITA way of specializing from the base specification for needs of a certain user community or a single company. What is missing, of course, is the dimension opened up by mobile devices. Three years, before smartphones capable of even only displaying any longer chunks of information arrived (iPhone 2007), nobody could have imagined what we need documentation now in the mobile era: Transport the right information to the right person at the right place at the right time. And DITA is a perfect vehicle to achieve this, because of its architecture and the vast tooling landscape that simply didn't exist in 2004. (Because Dawn mentioned it:) Part of (nearly) everybody's toolbox is the DITA-OT. I'm unsure if it needs inclusion in the TC charter. If you would, you would almost certainly label it as a reference implementation. Well, de facto it is, but you would elevate it to being it also de jure, and I'm not sure whether this is also in the interest of the DITA-OT maintainers. (Then again, I’m not sure if this would have any binding implications in the OASIS context.) What is also missing, is drawing a line and taking a stance towards mark*down* languages of any kind. While DocBook has been a true competitor for the gold standard in technical documentation at the time, it is worth to mention why DITA is the current standard in that field compared to Markdown, AsciiDoc, etc. Thanks, Frank irman of the Supervisory Board: Karl-Heinz Streibich - http://www.softwareag.com