Re: [dita] problem with packaging of glossaries [but not really]

[Kristen James Eberlein <keberlein@pobox.com>]

I thought that the current consensus was to deliver four packages:

    * Base
    * Technical Content (which includes base)
    * Learning and Training
    * Everything

My assumption was that each package would include the relevant DTD + the 
documentation. For *each* package, the documentation would be provided 
in the following formats:

    * PDF
    * HTML
    * DITA source files

Kris

Michael Priestley wrote:
>
> I think there's a couple of questions:
>
> - what do we provide as a downloadable zip
> - what do we provide as PDF
> - what do we provide as HTML
>
> At the start of this release, many of us were concerned that the 
> continued proliferation of specializations would render DITA too 
> intimidating for new adopters and tool providers. In particular, it's 
> hard to defend DITA as a simple but extensible architecture if we have 
> no downloadable documents that are less than 1000 pages long.
>
> As a compromise between documenting every possible DTD combination and 
> documenting none of them, we agreed on the following:
>         - deliver and document a base set of DTDs with minimal domains 
> and minimal markup support. This was at one end of a continuum.
>         - deliver and document two specific packages:
>                  one roughly representing our existing specialized 
> markup, with extensions for machine industry semantics
>                 and the other representing the major new 
> specializations for learning and training
>
> As an additional compromise, we agreed to provide the integrated HTML 
> documentation for everything, while continuing to provide separate 
> PDFs for each package. This made sense inasmuch as the PDFs needed to 
> be chunked at a lower level for printability, whereas the HTML needed 
> to be cross-linked for navigability.
>
> So, I think as it currently stands, there are 3 zips, 3 PDFs, and 1 
> HTML web. I'd like to see the counterproposals summarized like this as 
> well, so I can get a clear idea of what we're choosing between. Then 
> hopefully we can take a look at what the result would be for each 
> choice - ie, take a look at some prototype docs in the different 
> formats to see how truly navigable they are, how big they get, etc.
>
> But we can't keep revisiting the chunking decision every few months 
> until we release. At some point the decision has to stick.
>
> Michael Priestley, Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM)
> Lead IBM DITA Architect
> mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
> http://dita.xml.org/blog/25
>