Hi, Gershon.
Please see my comments below.
Best,
Kris
Kristen James Eberlein
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting
www.eberleinconsulting.com
+1 919 622-1501; kriseberlein (skype)
On 12/2/2019 9:17 AM, Gershon Joseph
wrote:
Hi all,
Â
I have reviewed this proposal and have a
few comments (they are general comments not specifically
related to this proposal. Excuse me if any of these things
have been discussed in my absence from the TC, in which case
just refer me to the minutes or other documentation.
Â
Point #1
This proposal does not state why the change
is being done. Whatâs the motivation for this change? Whatâs
the business case? I can think of a couple, but I think the
proposal should mention the business or technical need driving
the change. Then this text could be lifted as-is to the
documentation of the standard, which should make life easier
for the authors of the eventual standard.
<kje>This is covered in the stage
two proposal. It would be good if you familiarized yourself
with the stage 1, stage 2, and stage processes. We put
considerable time in implementing this new process for DITA
1.3 and revising it for DITA 2.0; we are pretty satisfied with
it.
I'm very glad to see you back
participating on the TC, Gershon, but you will have some
catching up to do! We've changed a lot of processes since I
became chair.
See:
Stage two proposal for #29: https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/201910/msg00097.html
DITA 2.0 process: https://wiki.oasis-open.org/dita/DITA_2.0_Proposal_Process_DRAFT
(ignore fact that URL contains the word DRAFT)
</kje>
Â
Point #2
Why are we concerned about keeping backward
compatibility in a major release? The TC has a huge,
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fix and improve things that
we could not do with any minor release of the standard. If
there is a better way to achieve the desired outcome, I
suggest we do it now and document any backward incompatibility
we introduce. Iâm concerned about making the DTD files more
complex simply for the sake of backwards compatibility when
weâre doing a major release.
<kje>DITA 2.0 is our very first
backwards INCOMPATIBLE release. This has scared many people in
the committee. Accordingly, we are committed to documenting
backwards-incompatible stuff carefully. We also consider how
big of an impact a change would have and whether it's worth
it.
In general, we're doing a whole lot of
clean up and implementing a lot of changes to previous design
decisions that ended up being less than optimal.</kje>
Â
Point #3
Point #2 is a good Segway into this
concern. The standard says the XSDs are the normative
standard, but our proposals talk about DTDs almost
exclusively. All of our content model discussions are based on
how to achieve the outcome via DTDs. If the XSD schema is
normative, letâs focus our discussion on the XSD
implementation and optimize that. At this time, the XSDs are
essentially reverse-engineered DTDs, and donât take full
opportunity of XSD functionality. For DITA 2.0 I feel strongly
we should re-architect the XSDs to fully embrace the schema
functionality and best practices. Many vendors have raised
this concern with me, so itâs not just me. <duck as Robert
A throws a large heavy object in my direction/>
Seriously, Iâm not undermining the huge
effort Robert and others put into the XSDs, I really do
appreciate it. What Iâm suggesting is we take on an XSD
re-architecture at this time before itâs too late.
<kje>Um ... No. You are missing
facts. RNG is the normative grammar and has been so since 1.3.
We will not be shipping XSDs for DITA 2.0, unless someone
steps forward to create and test them. Firm decision made
already by the TC.</kje>
Â
Point #4
The formatting of figure titles is
confusing. I keep thinking the figure title is a figure
caption referring to the code sample above, due to the lack of
space above the title and huge space below. The figure title
actually refers to the figure below the title. I know this is
OASIS style, but please, please letâs fix it!!
<kje>If you have specific changes to
suggest, I'll point you to the relevant plug-in. It lives in a
DITA TC Git repo.</kje>
Â
Besides these gripes, I really like this
proposal and see how it will make life easier for many users.
I think weâd use it eventually at Mastercard (my current
client at Precision Content).
Â
This is a very well-written proposal. Job
well done!
<kje>Thanks.</kje>
Â
Gershon
Â
Â
From: <>
on behalf of Kristen James Eberlein
<>
Date: Sunday, 1 December 2019 at 16:43
To: DITA TC <>
Subject: [dita] Stage three: #29 Bookmap update --
Ready for TC consideration
Â
This proposal has been reviewed by:
Nancy Harrison, Individual member
Eliot Kimber, Individual member
Eric Sirois, IXIASOFT
The PDF is attached; the DITA source is available at
http://tools.oasis-open.org/version-control/browse/wsvn/dita/trunk/DITA-2.0/stage-3/Issue-29-bookmap-update.dita
--
Best,
Kris
Kristen James Eberlein
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting
www.eberleinconsulting.com
+1 919 622-1501; kriseberlein (skype)
