I don't agree. We can and should dictate against DocBook-style customization in the DITA standard.
If organizations want to create their own XML based implementations that are similar to, but not entirely conforming to the DITA specification, they are free to do that, but they should not claim that it is DITA conforming and they need to be aware that there are no guarantees as to interoperability with other DITA conforming implementations.
-Jeff
-----Original Message-----
From: Dana Spradley [mailto:dana.spradley@oracle.com]
Sent: Mon 7/6/2009 1:26 PM
To: Eliot Kimber; Ogden, Jeff; dita
Subject: DocBook vs DITA customization (was RE: [dita] some comemnts on the Draft DITA 1.2 architecture spec.)
I agree on your characterization of the difference, Eliot - but disagree that DITA should completely disallow DocBook-style customization.
Different installations have different needs. SGML and XML have a long tradition of using standard vocabularies like DocBook and DITA as the basis of customized vocabularies more closely attuned to an installation's actual content.
The extension mechanisms DITA supplies are limited, and require a fair amount of overhead with little benefit to installations that support only a single flavor of DITA, and do not share their documents with other installations.
While we can and should recommend their use - I don't think we can or should dictate against DocBook-style customization in the DITA standard.
It only makes us look narrow, shortsighted, and a little foolish to do so.
--Dana
-----Original Message-----
From: Eliot Kimber [mailto:ekimber@reallysi.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2009 11:58 AM
To: Dana Spradley; Ogden, Jeff; dita
Subject: Re: [dita] some comemnts on the Draft DITA 1.2 architecture
spec.
One key difference between DITA and DocBook is DocBook has no controlled
extension mechanism comparable to specialization, so there is *only*
customization with DocBook. By contrast, DITA enables configuration and
extension and essentially disallows the type of customization DocBook
assumes (that is, direct modification of content models, adding new,
non-standard element types, etc.).
So I continue to suggest that the features DITA provides are materially
different from what things like DocBook provide and are not, for most part,
customization.
Cheers,
E.
On 7/2/09 12:07 PM, "Dana Spradley"