OASIS DocBook TC2

  • 1.  Draft Kavi message

    Posted 02-13-2004 19:37
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    docbook-tc message

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    Subject: Draft Kavi message


    At the last meeting, I took an action to draft our committee response
    to OASIS about the state of Kavi. Here it is. (Bob, please make sure
    we have an item on the agenda for discussing this.)
    
    The DocBook Technical Committee would like to express its continued
    frustration with the document management part of the Kavi system
    implemented at OASIS. We find the system to be technically inadequate
    at best and flatly broken at worst. Beyond the technical issues, we
    are concerned that it is an awkward, difficult to use system and
    consequently we fear that it may be driving users away from OASIS.
    This is not only bad for our committee, it is bad for the consortium
    as a whole.
    
    It is our unanimous opinion that the Kavi system as currently
    implemented has critical flaws, and that it is imperative that they be
    corrected. We are aware that some of these issues have been brought to
    your attention before by individuals, but we would like to reiterate
    them here as part of our committee position.
    
    We draw your attention to the following technical issues.
    
    1. The document repository is simply broken. Although chairs and
       secretaries can organize documents into a hierarchy, this hierarchy
       is not exposed to the general public. This frustrates any attempt
       that the committee might make to organize the documents for the
       public.
    
    2. The Kavi system forces documents to have automatically generated
       URIs that are meaningless and difficult to remember. Even if we
       were able to accept the URIs generated, it is impossible to predict
       the URI that will be assigned to a document when it is placed in
       the repository. This makes it impossible for the committee to
       decide offline, for example at a face-to-face meeting, where and
       how documents will be published.
    
    3. Another consequence of the fact that URIs are generated by the
       system rather than assigned by the committee with responsibility
       for the material is that it is impossible to publish specifications
       that contain internal cross references. An HTML version of a
       specification, for example, cannot contain a link to the PDF
       version.
    
    4. This also makes it impossible to publish a web of documents. A
       large document could not be broken into chapters, for example, with
       navigational links between the chapters.
    
    5. It follows further that the DocBook Committee *cannot* publish the
       DocBook DTD on the OASIS site. DocBook is a modular DTD and the
       URIs of the modules must be predictable. In fact, as a general
       rule, it would seem that no Technical Committee can publish any
       schema, stylesheet, or other work product of any reasonable
       complexity on the OASIS site other than as a zip package or
       something similar for the user to download and install locally.
    
    6. The OASIS email system is unable to deal with properly formatted
       MIME messages. It simply discards their contents and forwards a blank
       message to the list. This is causing considerable frustration and wasted
       effort. We observe also that several individuals have approached the
       committee to express frustration with the mailing list software.
       This situation is inhibiting communications within OASIS TCs thereby
       slowing down work by its members.
    
    7. The design of the OASIS web server is insufficient for the needs of
       the DocBook Technical Committee. Before the migration to Kavi, the
       DocBook TC maintained an area of web space on the server containing
       almost 4,000 individual pages. No member of the public can be
       expected to navigate a web space of that size without some
       navigation system for the pages that are in the space, but the Kavi
       design offers no mechanism for such an information architecture.
    
    8. It is also simply impractical to maintain a system of that size
       through a system that uses web forms as its user interface
       paradigm.
    
    In addition to solving these technical issues, we feel that OASIS
    should give serious consideration to the overall design of the site.
    
    We are concerned that the current design frustrates users ability to
    quickly and conveniently find the information that they need. (Try,
    for example, to find XML Catalogs Committee Specification or the
    minutes of the second UBL meeting)
    
    This frustration, we fear, will make them less likely to return to the
    OASIS site thereby deprecating the organizations important role in the
    industry. Several TC members have already noticed this effect on
    themselves or others in their organizations.
    
    We recognize that technical committees have many different needs. Kavi
    provides facilities for electronic balloting, membership maintenance,
    and meeting scheduling that are valuable. But it is demonstrably
    inadequate in some very key ways: in the presentation of committee
    work products, in the publication of schemas and other ancillary
    materials, in the design and organization of technical committee web
    sites, and in its inability to provide reasonable looking public URIs.
    
    We close with the simple observation that these issues, both the
    technical and non-technical, are driving committees to establish
    entirely independent web sites in order to better serve their user
    communities. It would seem clear that OASIS must re-prioritize some
    staff duties and ensure that immediate, dramatic action is taken if it
    wishes to reverse this trend.
    
    Signed,
    
    The DocBook Technical Committee
    
    <list of committee members>
    
                                            Be seeing you,
                                              norm
    
    -- 
    Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | Computer Science is the first
    http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | engineering discipline in which
    Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | the complexity of the objects
                                       | created is limited solely by the
                                       | skill of the creator, and not by
                                       | the strength of raw materials.--B.
                                       | Reid
    


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