Submitter's message ActionItems:
1. Frank will send info on new XML org and initial meeting to Kris, so she can send it to dita-users list.
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Minutes of the OASIS DITA TC
Tuesday, 11 August 2026
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, Kristen Eberlein, Nancy Harrison, Bob Johnson, Zoe Lawson, Christina Rothwell, Eric Sirois, Frank Wegmann
Business
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Regrets: none
1. Minutes
28 July 2026 (Harrison, 3 August 2026)
https://groups.oasis-open.org/discussion/dita-tc-minutes-28-july-2026-uploaded
Kris moved, 2nd Stan, approved by TC
2. Announcements; new items for agenda
- FrankI'd like to distribute an announcement over dita-users group, plus an update from Balisage, about a new int'l org for XML, which was discussed at the last Balisage; intro meeting is coming up
- Kris; I've added agenda items
- Bob; an iiRDS plugin for DITA-OT, updated with DITA integration I did, was released on Friday; I'll be presenting it at Boston DUG tomorrow; if you want to contact me about it, reach me at admin@bostonuserdita.
- Kris; can you or Stan send out that info, so TC members can join this call
- Stan; sure; zoom info is:
Boston DITA -- Bob Johnson on iiRDS and DITA
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83801120436 Meeting chat link
https://us02web.zoom.us/launch/jc/83801120436 Meeting ID: 838 0112 0436
Passcode: 700529
3. Call with consultant hired by OASIS (Eberlein and Anderson)
Tony Cox [consultant]
- Kris; OASIS has a contract with Tony to assess committee work. Tony reached out to Kris, so Kris set up a call with him and Robert joined.
- Robert; he said the premise was some problems with OASIS as a whole, and felt like current leaders were trying to improve things, so he was willing to help; seemed to be a broad set of questions. He reached out to active TCs to see where they have issues. we've seen participation drop off as companies drop out, and individual memberships are too hard and expensive. Another major complaint was over the big tech switch; folks have had lots of problems; 1) much less ease in searching email, 2) old tools were much better. He said that everyone is upset with the tech switch; they're working on fixes to address it, but we don't know what the results will be. The basic question is "why did you do this?"
- Kris; I was frank about the fact that new tech stack makes it impossible to do simple things like calculating quorum; that's an example of a really bad problem. Certainly there were problems with Kavi, but it really worked for us; for one thing, it was very hard to switch to a repo associated with our github repo, which we absolutely had to do. Tony wanted to know about compatibility testing and reference implementations. But there aren't multiple reference implementations. for DITA, there's mostly DITA-OT.
- Robert; and that's not technically a reference implementation; there are multiple implementations of DITA out there, but none of them, strictly speaking, are reference implementations, which would imply that it's owned by the TC and technically correct by definition.
- Robert; I tend to notice that description - reference implementation - because it's led to issues in the past; in any case DITA-OT is the closest we have to a reference implementation.
- Kris; wrt the work of our TC and DITA-OT, we've turned DITA into a commodity that makes it not so critical to have vendors part of the TC, now but our vendor participation is almost nil; Eric (Madcap) and Leroy (Adobe) are the only ones.
- Eric; no one from Vasont? And technically, Madcap isn't a member any more, they just pay for me to be a member.
- Kris; so you're technically an associate member. Just for reference, there are 3 levels of OASIS membership, company level, associate indiv member (sponsored by company) , indiv membership, (one single individual).
- Kris; I'll reach out to Tony and let him know that DITA-OT isn't a reference implementation. too bad he couln't join us today...
4. Update from Balisage (Wegmann)
- Frank; this was the last Balisage, my primary motivation to go. it was memorable; reason for end was upcoming retirement of Tommy Usdin and Deb Lapeyre. So this year was a full week, a mixture of topics such as how people handle markup tech, and what the technologies are.
For example, they reported on 1) upcoming 4.0 XLST standard; 2) how to use Schematron in an efficient way; 3) how can I use XProp to test XSLT.. 4) what markup standards can be used for musical notation docs; 5) how do other fields use markup tech?
Because it was the last, many folks came; saw so many people who have been instrumental in XML, got a bit emotional but also lots of practical things being done.
5. Frank report on new organization being formed to continue work of Balisage
- Frank; Balisage was the gathering place for all XML practicioners. So there was a real question of "how do we continue?" What could we do to continue this??? That was discussed in a number of BOFs; upshot was decision to have an inaugural meeting that would be the successor to it.
1. discuessed in BO project at U of Koln, as a "nachlass" (meaning the positive aspects of legacy)
2. a number of sessions, incl by the inventor of omnimark, who passed away last week; he had a large archive and it was made available to Balisage participants, I think I can distribute it to you.
- Kris; is there an open link to this invitation for the new orgganization?
- Frank; yes, it's:
Request to join:
https://lists.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=IOXML-L&A=1
They've set up a listserv mailing list to discuss everything up to the inaugural mtg. I would like to have this published on dita-users, which I'm no longer on
- Kris; can you send it to me?
- Frank; I will do that, we can also discuss that with Stan wrt SIGDOC. At Balsiage, on Monday morning there was nothing, just concern, and by Friday there was a complete plan, including a discussion with W3C a GT4 working groups.
***ActionItem: Frank will send info on new XML org and initial meeting to Kris, so she can send it to dita-users list.
- Kris; OASIS is undergoing transitions, Chet Ensign, the TC admin, has retired, and it's totally not clear who his replacement is; this may be tied into consulting work Tony Cox is doing. Thank you, Frank, for having attended Balisage.
- Frank; I'm glad I did, it was an important meeting place for this work. ACM SIGDOC is also very valuable. Participlants felt that when XML standards were dropped by W3C, and not picked up by ISO, it was felt that there needed to be a follow-up org and meeting place for XML practicioners.
- Kris; Frank, please clarify W3C 'dropping' XML standards?
- Frank; there is no longer a group within W3C maintaining these stds. they just came up with an informal working group.
- Robert; when you say they dropped XML, is that just XML, or XML and all related specs? And is it not just that they no longer distribute them, but also that they're no longer maintaining them?
- Frank; they're still distributing them, but not maintaining them or paying attention to them.
- Kris; was there not enough active W3C particpation to maintain XML?
- Frank; I don't know. Liam was involved from early on, they felt that its there but nothing they care about. The hope is that, if there's a new org centered on XML+, that org would take ownership of the technologies and take care of them.
- Kris; don't know as much about W3C, but there were members and 'invited experts' who were the actual XML experts.
- Frank; not sure how that will play out in future.
- Kris; and we all care about how this will play out.
- Frank; there was an open mic session, and Tony Harald, who noticed an error in the XML 1.0 spec. [about escaping literals 2.3 and 2.4 contradict each other]
- Kris; was any of the conference recorded, for any late registrants?
- Frank; Balisage by choice never recorded anything, but Balisage always had proceedings, you had to submit a written paper, which got peer reviewed. That's why Eliot did a BOF, because he didn't have time to write a paper. As of now, the conference proceedings of this and previous years are available on mulberrytech.com. the word is that they may be archived on some established site.
- Kris; So, could there be a replacement for Balisage? And could there be a replacement for an org to do the work that was done under the XML part of W3C?
- Frank; the new org is about #2, there's been no talk about a replacement for Balisage.
- Nancy; but if a new org. came into existence, it would probably have annual mtgs, which would effectively be a Balisage replacement...
close 12:01pm EDT
-- Ms. Nancy Harrison
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Nancy Harrison
Principal, Infobridge Solutions
Nancy Harrison (Personal)
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