ActionItems:
1. Robert will remove state element
2. Robert will remove unknown element
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Minutes of the OASIS DITA TC
Tuesday, 11 June 2024
Recorded by Hancy Harrison
link to agenda for this meeting:
https://github.com/oasis-tcs/dita/wiki/Previous-agendas
Attendance:
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Robert Anderson, Stan Doherty, Kris Eberlein, Nancy Harrison, Scott Hudson, Bob Johnson, Eliot Kimber, Zoe Lawson, Christina Rothwell, Eric Sirois, Leroy Steinbacher, Dawn Stevens
Business
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Regrets: Frank Wegmann
1. Approve minutes from previous business meeting
14 May 2024 (Harrison, 14 May 2024) https://groups.oasis-open.org/discussion/dita-tc-meeting-minutes-14-may-2024
Kris moved, 2nd Bob Johnson, approved by TC
2. Announcements
Adobe DITA world is scheduled for 11-13 June 2024. You still can register!
[Leroy is presenting at Adobe DITA World; would be happy to get feedback on his presentation from any TC members who are interested in giving it.]
3. Update from Kris Eberlein
- Kris; due to a confluence of issues resulting in necessary time away, I can't continue as spec editor for the next 3 monthsm, though I can keep chairing meetings
Robert; obviously, family and personal health comes before the spec.
[general TC consensus on this]
4. Transition to new OASIS infrastructure: How is it going?
Any issues?
- Eric; still some problems, but they may be from our company changing names, so still some issues.
- Kris; so nothing has changed?
- Eric; not really, but I just need to check website on regular basis, since TC email isn't showing up in my regular mail.
5. Base spec: Review Aretha Franklin: Specialization elements
Eberlein, 14 May 2024 https://groups.oasis-open.org/discussion/base-spec-review-aretha-franklin-specialization-elements-2
NEW Update on participation, questions raised (Anderson)
[no discussion necessary]
6. Technical content spec: Review Big Bill Broonzy: Glossentry, take two
Eberlein, 14 May 2024 https://groups.oasis-open.org/discussion/technical-content-spec-review-big-bill-broonzy-glossentry-take-two
NEW Update on participation, questions raised (Anderson)
- Robert; not sure if everyone has finished reviewing this. there were several very usefu comments, including a couple of comments on state elements. One was "Since our instructions mention boolean element, we should give examples of boolean element". But we're getting rid of that element because there was never a valid reason for it. There's a larger question about state element; what is it doing? Answer to that is that boolean and state were created in 1.0, to have machine language within DITA. They're not, practically speaking, very useful; there's no good use case for either. Another comment/question was 'why do they have just @name and @value attributes; data element has so much more?' Answer to that is because those 2 elements came before data element. We could make boolean and state specialisations of data, but only if someone is actually using them. Should we take this chance to get rid of boolean?
- Eliot; I vote throw it out
- Kris; I've never seen it used; it would make good sense to get rid of it and tell users to migrate to data.
- Robert; and if you are currently using it, you'd have to be providing your own processing; we don't provide any. so migrating to using it as a specialization of data wouldn't lose anything.
- Scott; 2.0 is our best/only chance to get rid of it.
- Eliot; it's not a metadata element, so data wouldn't be a good replacement, ph might be better.
- Robert; it isn't metadata, but it's empty; the only way to use it is by putting a value in it.
- Kris; it's spelled out as a content element, but if anyone was using it, they would have needed special processing, so it's not hard to change it to data.
- Eliot; but data isn't meant to be rendered, state is definitely an outlier that way.
- Robert; my preference is just to remove it.
- Kris; any objection to getting rid of it?
[none]
- Kris; so what is our migration sugestion? could just say, if you need it, specialize an element?
- Robert; there's an equal chance they're using it for content or metadata; if metadata, migrate to data, if content, pick an appropriate element.
***ActionItem: Robert will remove state element
- Robert; now to unknown element; many comments, folks are deeply confused. We have foreign and unknown elements, it's hard to tease apart the distinction, I think with unknown, we're directly including some other XML vocabulary. for foreign, the expectation is that you'll foreign to bring in your content, e.g. SVG. Not sure what diffthe difference really is; if unknown goes away, foreign could replace it easily. so the migration path is much clearer
- Kris; what about include? not sure I remember the nuances of include.
- Robert; it's a reference to non-DITA content.
- Kris; has anyone ever seen an unknown element used?
- Eliot; I've seen it as an escape for data conversion, but it's such a weak case, I'd vote to get rid of it. Conversion case implies that you convert something that needs to immediately processable.
- Robert; and for that we now have required-cleanup
- Kris; so consensus is to remove unknown and recommend replacing it with foreign.
- Bob; eliminating unknown makes sense to me.
- Robert; so any objections to removing it.
[none]
***ActionItem: Robert will remove unknown element.
- Kris; we haven't covered how and where to document the migration path.
- Robert; I'll create a Github issue for those removals.
- Bob; so we'll communicate to larger community that these are gone?
- Kris; we do have plans to issue a CN, preferably before release of 2.0. Zoe and Eliot worked on it, but we've continued to remove elements, so if we don't have an active issue, we need to create one.
- Robert; some of the comments about foreign element noted that our example of it is a specialization of SVG, now we have such a specializationone, so should we use a different example?
- Nancy; makes no sense to not use an actual specialziation.
- Robert; going forward, if you see something that should be improved, you'll need to do the work to improve it; that is. you need to suggest alternate wording/coding.
7. Future DITA 2.0 reviews
Eberlein, 07 May 2024 https://groups.oasis-open.org/discussion/dita-20-reviews
NEW Subject for next review, what's needed from TC members (Anderson)
- Robert; next review is indexing; I'll put my own comments in before I put it out for review.
11:30 am ET close
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Nancy Harrison
Principal, Infobridge Solutions
Nancy Harrison (Personal)
Portland OR
978-505-9189
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