Re: [dita-fa-edboard] DITApedia proposal

[Bruce Esrig <esrig-ia@esrig.com>]

Hi Su-Laine,

This is a really interesting project. A DITApedia would have the advantage 
of having critical mass. Right now, it's not clear to the community where 
to go in order to contribute to knowledge about DITA.

Here's a typical use case:
  (1) Identify a publishing problem and make a list of several related elements
  (2) Get first-example usage advice from a published source (like the DITA 
User Guide)
  (3) Look up several language spec pages
  (4) Refer to the arch spec for background information
  (5) Get in-practice usage advice summarized from a mailing list
  (6) Solicit new advice for a novel situation

Was there discussion about:
  - structure
  - editorial approach

A standard page should contain cross references to cover each of these six 
or seven goals. Can all that content be built by a community? Can it be 
built in a wiki, or is another technology (supporting or alternative) 
needed that can generate the necessary links?

The wikipedia has a cascade of administrators. What would we set up for 
this site?

On which wiki: Don has been suggesting that a wiki with a DITA internal 
representation would be a very natural development for DITA. Should we be 
rallying support for that approach? Bob Doyle has enabled people to author 
using DITA Storm on his DITA Users site. Maybe we can continue in that 
direction.

Best wishes,

Bruce

At 05:48 PM 6/14/2007, Su-Laine Yeo wrote:
>Hi everyone,
>
>Here are more details about the "DITApedia" idea we discussed this
>morning. I'd love to hear what the rest of you think.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>----------------------------------------
>Rationale
>
>The current body of knowledge for DITA is fragmented across many
>different places:
>- Very general "overview" articles in magazines and Wikipedia
>- Articles and presentations written by DITA evangelists, consultants,
>tool vendors, and experienced users
>- Archives of the Yahoo DITA user group
>- Official DITA Language Reference and Architectural Specification
>- Introduction to DITA book by Comtech
>- DITA Open Toolkit User Guide
>- Open Toolkit documentation
>
>Answering a question such as "Can I use DITA if I need to deliver
>content in Japanese?" may require digging through many different
>sources. We often hear from writers that core DITA documentation such as
>the Language Reference needs more examples or richer descriptions.
>
>Members of the TC would also like to make it easier for the community to
>comment on DITA specifications.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>----------------------------------------
>Proposal: a Wikpedia-type site devoted to DITA
>
>- It aims to be a compendium of knowledge about DITA and the Open
>Toolkit. The wiki at dita.xml.org was originally intended to be this,
>but hasn't kicked into gear.
>- It would be complementary to most of the current content in
>dita.xml.org. The DITApedia wiki would focus on objective reference-type
>information, whereas the other areas on dita.xml.org are more
>appropriate for expression of points of view (thought leadership), and
>copyrighted content. (I think many of the articles in
>http://dita.xml.org/knowledge-base could, with permission, perhaps be
>moved to the DITApedia wiki. For example, this one:
>http://dita.xml.org/arch-maps )
>- We would seed the wiki with a dump of the Langref, ArchSpec, and free
>OT documentation. Permission will need to be negotiated for each of
>these. One goal is to produce more usable and complete, but unofficial,
>versions of the descriptions of the core DITA documentation set,
>including the Language Reference and Architectural Specification. (We
>have wanted to import core documents into a wiki environment for some
>time, but don't yet know technically how to do it. One key action item
>is therefore to find or develop a DITA-to-wikitext or HTML-to-wikitext
>conversion method.)
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>----------------------------------------
>Prototype
>
>I've created a simple DITApedia prototype here:
>http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/DITApedia. I've fleshed out a couple of
>areas to demonstrate some capabilities:
>- To answer the question, "Can I use DITA if I need to deliver content
>in Japanese?" you would click "Supported languages" and then "Japanese
>language." The "Japanese language" page should tell you about all the
>gotchas for working with Japanese content.
>- The official description of the <image> element would be given in a
>page like this: http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Image_element .
>
>
>Su-Laine
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Carol Geyer [mailto:carol.geyer@oasis-open.org]
>Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 12:17 PM
>To: 'DITA Editorial Board'
>Subject: [dita-fa-edboard] Minutes: 14 June 2007 DITA XML.org Editorial
>Board Call
>
>Attending: Sue-Laine (chair), Michael, Deb, Carol
>
>1. Amber's <soapbox> article
>Attendees had not read Amber's latest draft, so this item was tabled for
>further Board discussion via email.
>
>2. Sample documents
>Sue-Laine discussed her idea for enabling people to post documents
>written in
>DITA as examples for testing. The purpose would be to provide examples
>that
>people could review, samples that could be run through the toolkit, ways
>to
>test the toolkit. While we may want to offer a more specific user
>interface at
>some point, the Board decided to test the concept by creating a new
>resource
>type in the RESOURCES directory.
>
>AI: Carol to create new resource type.
>Board: To post sample documents and provide suggestions for customizing
>the UI.
>
>3. Recent posts
>Michael suggested we change "Recent blog" headlines in right nav to
>"Recent
>posts" so that new entries throughout the site receive visibility.
>
>AI: Carol to work with IT to change right nav to display the five most
>recent
>posts of any kind.
>
>4. DITA-pedia
>Sue-Laine discussed her idea to incorporate true wiki technology to
>create a
>DITA-pedia site on the order of wikipedia. Others agreed that this would
>enhance our current Knowledge base and Wiki portions of the site (which
>have
>been less successful than the Today section).
>
>We identified several issues:
>- How do we get the seed content?
>- Which wiki do we use--mediawiki, perhaps something new from Drupal,
>something
>else?
>- Integration with the existing site is critical.
>- We'll need to clearly distinguish comments from the formal
>specification (and
>not confuse the two); possibly locking down content.
>- If we ask people to comment on the spec, we need to address IPR
>concerns.
>
>AI: Sue-Laine to investigate an html-to-wiki text converter.
>AI: Sue-Laine to develop technical requirements for the wiki software
>itself
>that we can provide to OASIS IT.
>AI: Carol to work with Mary and Robin on IPR issues around submitting
>comments.
>
>
>
>
>Next call:
>12 July 2007
>2:00 pm EST
>+1 (605) 990-0700, access code: 562542*
>
>
>_________________________________
>Carol Geyer
>Director of Communications
>OASIS
>+1.978.667.5115 x209
>
>
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