I am curious to know what the Enterprise Business Documents folks are
planning. Are they planning to specialize from topic, or are they
planning to work with concept, task, and reference?
Kris
JoAnn Hackos wrote:
I am in
favor of Bruce’s second
recommendation. What is the problem with stating that concept, task,
and
reference are key specializations in the DITA standard? Why should they
be
relegated to technical communication only? I just don’t see the point
of
that.
Even if
there is a All DITA package, we’re
not including information about task, concept, and reference
information types
in the base architectural specification, but only in the arch spec for
technical communication.
I’ve never
been in favor of this
split and would strongly prefer that we include task, concept,
reference, and
glossary in the base architectural specification. That would leave us
with the
machine industry specialization, which is, of course, extremely
relevant for
many outside the machine industry, and the various domains (software,
ui,
programming, machine industry, safety hazard). Also bookmap. Why is
bookmap
considered relevant only for technical communication. It’s probably
less
relevant there and more relevant for DocBook aficionados.
Since I’m
writing the tech comm arch
spec content and the topic content, I’d be very happy to restore task,
concept, reference, and glossary to the base arch spec. I could include
a
statement that these may primarily relate to product documentation
although I
really don’t think that’s true.
JoAnn
JoAnn Hackos
PhD
President
Comtech Services,
Inc.
Skype joannhackos
From: Bruce Nevin
(bnevin) [mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, August
20, 2009
11:24 AM
To:
Subject: [dita]
problem with
packaging of glossaries
This
came
up in the spec authoring meeting today.
The
problem: <glossentry> is specialized from <concept>.
<task>,
<concept>, and <reference> are in the TechDocs package.
This forces
<glossentry> etc. to be restricted to the TD package. But
non-TechDocs folks need glossaries, and support for them should be in
the base.
Two
solutions:
Accept
this. Present it as an unfortunate fait accompli for 1.2 -- if you want
a glossary, you have to use the TD package (or specialize your own).
Move
<task>, <concept>, and <reference> back into the
base, sans TD-specific domain specializations, and include those
specializations in the TD package. Present this as an interim step
toward simplified topics being developed by the BusDocs SC.
Comment?
Action?
/Bruce
