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Minutes of the OASIS DITA TC
Tuesday, 24 September 2024
Recorded by Nancy 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, Zoe Lawson, Christina Rothwell, Eric Sirois, Leroy Steinbacher, Dawn Stevens, Frank Wegmann, Leo Belchikov
Business
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Regrets: Eliot Kimber
1. Approve minutes from previous business meeting
17 September 2024 (Harrison, 23 September 2024) https://groups.oasis-open.org/discussion/dita-tc-meeting-minutes-17-september-2024
Kris moved, 2nd by Christina, approved by TC
2. Announcements
Call for speakers: DITA Europe, 17-18 February 2025, Copenhagen, Denmark. Deadline is 01 October 2024. https://ditaeurope.infomanagementcenter.com/call-for-speakers/
- Dawn; call for speaker deadlines is coming up, if you can send anything, that helps, even if it's not firmed up.
Call for speakers: ConVEx 2025, 07-09 April 2025, San Jose, CA https://convex.infomanagementcenter.com/call-for-speakers-2025/
- Scott; DocBook will be moved to a Github project, no longer in OASIS; vasically because it's mature enough to not need to be in OASIS.
- Kris; it's not official yet, but looks like Mayo will be hiring a full-time DITA-OT software engineer. I'll share more info once I have more firm info.
3. Warehouse (library) topics vs reusable component topics
E-mail from Eberlein, 21 September 2024 https://groups.oasis-open.org/discussion/warehouse-library-topics-vs-reusable-component-topics
Response by Kimber, then Eberlein
- Kris; our examples are mostly large library topic; in recent years I've mstly recommended individual topics since they're more reusable. Eliot spoke to fact that he can see appeal of indiv topics, but at servicenow they're in github and have tons and tons of warehouse topics.
- Zoe; I was at IBM when linking locked a library topic, system choked, it was a real problem. So I'm a little gunshy at having huge library topics. But now working in Github; we like to have warehouse topics but with many little warehouses, e.g., product feature by feature. It's also matters how much of the content is being reused, product-only vs. across products.
- Eric; we've gone in the other direction, using many small topics, in a CCMS, so you don't have to change workflow on multiple topics just because you've changed one thing.
- Dawn; my clients vary; those using Ixiasoft tend to use more topics; non-CCMS users tend to use more warehouse topics. We don't recommend using many small topics unless we know our client is in a CCMS. I think we should note both types and note how they differ.
- Stan; without a CCMS, having library topics requires a certain type of governance, but we've used lots of them.
- Christina; at HP, we do something similar; if you use conrefs, we make sure that the referenced topics are all are in a single folder. That lets writers know that content is being reused in various places.
- Frank; we came out with metadata framework; dita conrefs are generated from that metadata, so it has impact on other topics. If there's a problem, we can change it without affecting the way writers need to maintain their data.
- Bob; I've seen CCMSs that manage single objects, rather than managing libraries. I prefer libraries, it reduces the number of files you have to manage. The question is "how large?" I recommend no more than 50 reuseable objects in a single library topic, and subdivide the libraries if they start to grow past that; e.g., if you have too many 'admonitions', than separate 'cautions' from 'warnings', and if that gets too big, then make smaller pieces. Also, store reusable stuff is separate locations and labelled.
- Robert; I'm somewhat ambivalent. Have sympathy for small libraries, but wrt putting examples in spec, I don't want to give an exhaustive list and imply that it's exhaustive. But we probably want to move away from all of them being big libraries
- Kris; right now, the fact that all of our examples are libraries implies that's the only way to do it or a best practice, and we definitely don't want to mention 'best practices' around this issue.
- Robert; in fact, we probably should mention that examples are not exhaustive or comprehensive. As it is, all the current examples came in with their features and haven't been touched.
4. Conref review: Ella Fitzgerald
Opening of review (Anderson, 17 September 2024 https://groups.oasis-open.org/discussion/base-spec-review-ella-fitzgerald-all-about-content-referencing)
PDF https://groups.oasis-open.org/discussion/dita-20-review-e-conref-uploaded
Content Fusion review https://fusion.oxygenxml.com/tasks/ngbco2onlce6jm39qa6r07d2bvgtohtl5c5in7ohj0nmkckr
Update on review
Participation as of 24 September 2024 https://groups.oasis-open.org/discussion/participation-in-conref-review-so-far
Trends?
- Kris; sent update to list noting who's participated
- Robert; not sure about trends; consistent comments noting same issue over and over, also some comments wrt consistency of language; comments about gen'l organization of topics, didn't suprise me. the content was originally in langref, and topics haven't been re-worked as concepts, so I expected the organizational comments. Also, a comment from Eliot; re generalization, which I responded to via email.
- Kris; any other ocomments?
- Zoe; is review still open?
- Kris; yes, one more week. we should wait for Eliot to discuss conref and generalization issue.
- Robert; thanks for reviews, every comment helps. if there's anyone who made a comment that they think needs to come to the TC, let me know and speak up here.
5. Question about conref and generalization
E-mail from Anderson, 24 September 2024 https://groups.oasis-open.org/discussion/question-about-conref-and-generalization
- Robert; I wanted to make sure folks understand Eliot's point, since it's an edge case.
- Frank; could you talk about motivation that led to this rule?
- Robert; one thing is that lots of processors, if they do something diff with a specialized elements, they don't do a check on whether the specialized element is legal. So it allows illegal stuff. I don't think it happens often. Also, it's hard to enforce now that @domains is obsolete; I think the rule has become less useful, so we need to decide if the rule is worth keeping.
- Kris; other than Oxygen, few tools support @conref properly, wrt whether you should be able to conref a specialized version of xref.
- Robert; if anyone didn't understand or wants more detail, few tools handle this specific edge case; e.g., if you're tring to conref something as a list item, you won't be allowed to use a step. The rule has been there since 1.0, so if we want to remove it, we need to discuss it.
- Leroy; good to have this review to see this stuff, thanks for the explanation.
- Robert; I think these smaller reviews are useful, and it's been a while since a deep review was done
- Leroy; I'd be inclined to have tools not even support this kind of thing.
11:41 AM ET close
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Nancy Harrison
Principal, Infobridge Solutions
Nancy Harrison (Personal)
Portland OR
978-505-9189
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