Lightweight DITA SC

Kristof van Tomme, who has a Drupal development company and is a DITA enthusiast, has come up with an idea for a starter DITA CCMS based on Drupal. This CCMS could use a Lightweight DITA mapping, so I am throwing it on the idea pile for your perusal. http://pronovix.com/blog/free-and-open-source-dita-ccms-modelling-arbitrary-xml-drupal Mark Giffin Mark Giffin Consulting, Inc. http://markgiffin.com/

Michael may appreciate my admission of acceptance earlier today in a tweet. Note that there is a HUGE amount of work to turn a concept into a production-level service--what we see here is *feasibility*. Kristof can make it happen but his interest survey shows that he is realistic about the anticipated effort and the level of sponsorship he'll need. Here is my more serious concern: The kinds of new Drupal capabilities that Kristof demoed are extremely powerful for anyone needing to develop modular information for adaptive content delivery, but in the absence of a data definition layer (like a DTD or Schema in even a simple form), there is no prayer of a chance for content interoperability--The Web According to Drupal, as I see it in Kristof's demo, has the potential to turn into a Tower of Babel as it were. Lightweight DITA will offer such a schema, but will it be acceptable? I suspect the Web will need to invent something with much looser validation within those editable chunks. -- Don On 3/26/2015 2:35 PM, Mark Giffin wrote: Kristof van Tomme, who has a Drupal development company and is a DITA enthusiast, has come up with an idea for a starter DITA CCMS based on Drupal. This CCMS could use a Lightweight DITA mapping, so I am throwing it on the idea pile for your perusal. http://pronovix.com/blog/free-and-open-source-dita-ccms-modelling-arbitrary-xml-drupal Mark Giffin Mark Giffin Consulting, Inc. http://markgiffin.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that generates this mail.  Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at: https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php -- Don R. Day Founding Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee LinkedIn: donrday    Twitter: @donrday About.me: Don R. Day    Skype: don.r.day Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? --T.S. Eliot This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com

I’ve worked with Kristof in the past to publish DITA content through a Drupal site. I think it’s a very powerful idea, but also agree with Don that there would still need to be a way to validate the content against a schema. This could be achieved through
schematron / XSL, and you can also restrict specific fields in Drupal for a content type. This could populate the mandatory items, such as the title, prescribe the metadata in the prolog, and any other items of interest. You can also set the order of fields
in a Drupal document type, so you could have the content area within a conbody followed by one or more sections (for example). 


I certainly think it’s worth exploring, but also agree that we need some way to ensure valid dita output.





Thanks and best regards,


Scott Hudson
Senior Consultant
Comtech Services Inc.

303-232-7586









From: Don R Day
Date: Thursday, March 26, 2015 at 6:55 PM
To: " dita-lightweight-dita@lists.oasis-open.org "
Subject: Re: [dita-lightweight-dita] Lightweight DITA CCMS based on Drupal




Michael may appreciate my admission of acceptance earlier today in a tweet.

Note that there is a HUGE amount of work to turn a concept into a production-level service--what we see here is *feasibility*. Kristof can make it happen but his interest survey shows that he is realistic about the anticipated effort and the level of sponsorship
he'll need.

Here is my more serious concern: The kinds of new Drupal capabilities that Kristof demoed are extremely powerful for anyone needing to develop modular information for adaptive content delivery, but in the absence of a data definition layer (like a DTD or Schema
in even a simple form), there is no prayer of a chance for content interoperability--The Web According to Drupal, as I see it in Kristof's demo, has the potential to turn into a Tower of Babel as it were.

Lightweight DITA will offer such a schema, but will it be acceptable? I suspect the Web will need to invent something with much looser validation within those editable chunks.

--
Don

On 3/26/2015 2:35 PM, Mark Giffin wrote:

Kristof van Tomme, who has a Drupal development company and is a DITA enthusiast, has come up with an idea for a starter DITA CCMS based on Drupal. This CCMS could use a Lightweight DITA mapping,
so I am throwing it on the idea pile for your perusal.

http://pronovix.com/blog/free-and-open-source-dita-ccms-modelling-arbitrary-xml-drupal

Mark Giffin
Mark Giffin Consulting, Inc.
http://markgiffin.com/

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Don R. Day
Founding Chair,
OASIS DITA Technical Committee
LinkedIn: donrday    Twitter:
@donrday
About.me: Don R. Day    Skype: don.r.day
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
--T.S. Eliot










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Over the weekend Kristof and I discussed this cloning mechanism demonstrated in the video.He agrees with my concern but we had to accept that we cannot put this genie back into a bottle; this is a case of natural Web solutions becoming available whether or not there is a standard. Also, we agreed that although Drupal is already there with some mechanisms, our SC needs to define our recommendations without dependence on one particular implementation. We basically agreed to: 1. Encourage the SC members to view the video if they have not already (do it! This is Very Important Stuff.) 2. Invite Kristof to a meeting for discussion and Q&A about the existing modules and ways to associate clear text rules to applications like Lightweight DITA 3. Seriously consider whether this alternative method of defining nestable modules in Web applications might in fact become a new base for Lightweight DITA or something we set on a parallel course with it (meaning we could actually capture a wider range of structured authoring use cases if they WEREN'T bound to the rather fixed legacy DITA flow sequences--and when we talk about the Content Marketing world, this is crucially important for capturing adoption). Kristof can tell us more about the internal data format that effectively enables this functionality--it is something that effectively represents a new kind of generative grammar and parsing rules. 4. Test the heck out of our proposals using this already available Drupal function.First, to help define that eventual schema mechanism, and second to feed back suggestions for both new function and concerns for development directions. Anyone can contribute anything to this module as time goes on; how do we keep good enough from morphing in a direction that breaks the contract we are trying to nail down? I suspect we need to move somewhat fast on 1 and 2 so that we know how to coach the wider discussions around us that will surely happen. This is seriously good stuff for anyone looking for a way to create Adaptive Content. Compared to the 3-4 year old continual referencing of NPR's COPE approach to that problem, this method is way more flexible and deployable. -- Don On 3/30/2015 9:57 AM, Hudson, Scott wrote: I’ve worked with Kristof in the past to publish DITA content through a Drupal site. I think it’s a very powerful idea, but also agree with Don that there would still need to be a way to validate the content against a schema. This could be achieved through schematron / XSL, and you can also restrict specific fields in Drupal for a content type. This could populate the mandatory items, such as the title, prescribe the metadata in the prolog, and any other items of interest. You can also set the order of fields in a Drupal document type, so you could have the content area within a conbody followed by one or more sections (for example).  I certainly think it’s worth exploring, but also agree that we need some way to ensure valid dita output. Thanks and best regards, Scott Hudson Senior Consultant Comtech Services Inc. 303-232-7586 From: Don R Day Date: Thursday, March 26, 2015 at 6:55 PM To: dita-lightweight-dita@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [dita-lightweight-dita] Lightweight DITA CCMS based on Drupal Michael may appreciate my admission of acceptance earlier today in a tweet. Note that there is a HUGE amount of work to turn a concept into a production-level service--what we see here is *feasibility*. Kristof can make it happen but his interest survey shows that he is realistic about the anticipated effort and the level of sponsorship he'll need. Here is my more serious concern: The kinds of new Drupal capabilities that Kristof demoed are extremely powerful for anyone needing to develop modular information for adaptive content delivery, but in the absence of a data definition layer (like a DTD or Schema in even a simple form), there is no prayer of a chance for content interoperability--The Web According to Drupal, as I see it in Kristof's demo, has the potential to turn into a Tower of Babel as it were. Lightweight DITA will offer such a schema, but will it be acceptable? I suspect the Web will need to invent something with much looser validation within those editable chunks. -- Don On 3/26/2015 2:35 PM, Mark Giffin wrote: Kristof van Tomme, who has a Drupal development company and is a DITA enthusiast, has come up with an idea for a starter DITA CCMS based on Drupal. This CCMS could use a Lightweight DITA mapping, so I am throwing it on the idea pile for your perusal. http://pronovix.com/blog/free-and-open-source-dita-ccms-modelling-arbitrary-xml-drupal Mark Giffin Mark Giffin Consulting, Inc. http://markgiffin.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that generates this mail.  Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at: https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php -- Don R. Day Founding Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee LinkedIn: donrday    Twitter: @donrday About.me: Don R. Day    Skype: don.r.day Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? --T.S. Eliot This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com -- Don R. Day Founding Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee LinkedIn: donrday    Twitter: @donrday About.me: Don R. Day    Skype: don.r.day Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? --T.S. Eliot This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com