MHonArc v2.5.0b2 -->
dita message
[Date Prev]
| [Thread Prev]
| [Thread Next]
| [Date Next]
--
[Date Index]
| [Thread Index]
| [List Home]
Subject: Re: [dita] index terms
Chris Wong wrote:
> My point is that we cannot assume DITA adopters will not be
> print-centric, nor can we tell print-centric users to bugger off.
I think this is the disconnect: DITA is explicitly *not* print centric.
It was originally designed to do things that *were not books* and what
facilities it has for doing book-type deliverables are, while not an
afterthought, definitely not the primary focus of its design.
What I'm saying is that some users of DITA may have made a suboptimal
technology choice if sophisticated book-centric publishing is a primary
requirement. That's just a fact and their inappropriate choice doesn't
necessarily obligate us, as a standards development body, to reorder our
priorities.
As a standards development body, just like any other development group,
we have to carefully manage the scope of what we're doing. DITA has
clearly defined, from the beginning, that sophisticated book publishing
is outside its scope. To the degree that holding that line means telling
some users to "bugger off" then we have to do that. DITA can't be all
things to all users. DITA will always be under presure to add features
that are outside of its scope. Sometimes we have to make hard decisions
about what to take on and what not to take on.
But at the same time, DITA can be extended unilaterally and I think that
sophisticated indexing is exactly the place to take advantage of that.
If there is a community of DITA users who really need more indexing than
DITA can easily provide with a minimum of design effort, that community
can drive its own development activity, whether its within a single
enterprise or an ad-hoc collaborative effort: i.e., start a project on
Source Forge.
In the case of Idiom as a business, a business that is explicitly
selling DITA-based solutions (see www.idiominc.com), I see an
opportunity to offer additional value by providing a well-architected
indexing solution on top of core DITA. But just because a company like
Idiom or Innodata Isogen, both companies that try to sell DITA-based
products and services, have customers that have requirements that DITA
doesn't currently meet doesn't necessarily mean that those features have
to go into the core DITA design. Precisely because of DITA's inherent
extensibility we, as a marketplace, can offer value-added solutions,
some of which might eventually become part of core DITA, some of which
might not.
Sophisticated indexing is just one example of a requirement that core
DITA will not ever satisfy. But DITA provides a built-in mechanism for
those requirements to be satisfied by third parties in an architected way.
Cheers,
Eliot
--
W. Eliot Kimber
Professional Services
Innodata Isogen
9390 Research Blvd, #410
Austin, TX 78759
(512) 372-8841
ekimber@innodata-isogen.com
www.innodata-isogen.com
[Date Prev]
| [Thread Prev]
| [Thread Next]
| [Date Next]
--
[Date Index]
| [Thread Index]
| [List Home]