Submitter's message ActionItems:
1. Robert will ask Jarno what he found problematical about map processing
2. Kris will post on dita-users about theire issues with map processing
3. Bob will post on Github forum and BUG list.
4. Kris wil read thru all this content and see if she can produce a better outline to bring back to TC by next week
5. Nancy will find June 3 minutes and submit if necessary.
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Minutes of the OASIS DITA TC
Tuesday, 5 August 2025
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, Kris Eberlein, Nancy Harrison, Scott Hudson, Bob Johnson, Christina Rothwell, Eric Sirois, Dawn Stevens, Frank Wegmann, Stan Doherty, Leo Belchikov
Business
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Regrets: Zoe Lawson, Leroy Steinbacher
1. Approve minutes from previous business meetings
Minutes, 22 July 2025 Taken by Christina Rothwell
https://groups.oasis-open.org/discussion/meeting-notes-from-july-22-2025
Kris moved, 2nd Scott, approved by TC
2. Announcements
- Stan; currently applying for OASIS membership; also, Boston DITA Users Group (BUG) is meeting next Weds at 11am with a talk on best practices for migration.
- Kris; we used to have a place on wiki front page for upcoming events, if I put it back, will you or Bob post it?
- Christina; sounds like a great topic; we're going thru a big tools migration...
- Kris; BUG meetings are always really good.
- Dawn; wrt DITA Europe and ConVex, rerquests for speakers for DITA Europe (Brussels, Feb.) and ConVex (Pittsburgh, April) are open, and DITA-OT is also happening in conjunction with DITA Europe.
- Bob; my consulting gig has ended so I'm available for opportunities.
3. DITA maps and their usage
Group review of placeholder content
https://dita-lang.org/dita/archspec/base/dita-maps-and-their-usage What else really needs to be covered?
- Kris; link notes what needs to be covered in 2.0 spec; we don't have a section about DITA map processing, but do have lots of info in non-normative examples. This is placeholder topic, with a short list of topics that ought to be in spec, but aren't. Please look thru it and bring ideas for other items that are really critical for DITA map processing, so we can write it up and get 2.0 out the door.
- Kris; when first drafting this, my thought was 'DITA maps are a unique DITA construction, and play a critical role, The topicref element needs to be covered better. e.g., 'what kind of hierarchies do topicrefs create?'
- Robert; some of the items came out of TC discussion. Conceptually, maps are a key DITA thing, and we haven't covered it enough, e.g., 'why is a map?' 'why do we have them?' so implementors can do their jobs better. There's a lot of stuff on how to process links in reltables, but none of the other ways. I think some of the info was out there in white papers at DITA 1.x, but that was taken as a given.
- Kris; so, for one concrete example; we have software developers at Mayo who are dedicated to supporting DITA implementations, but their first response when seeing a DITA map, and building a structure for ref'ing, they say: 'we only need the map, topicref map, and href elements, nothing else'. And that's not at all the case. so it caused a problem, e.g., they didn't consider conref. This is a great opportunity to throw out ideas you think should be covered - basic stuff about DITA maps - that developers coming to DITA without previous exposure need to have called out.
- Robert; does anyone tink this is overkill?
- christina; no, it's important, e.g.,telling people that a map provides a list of topics hierarchy, including submaps, We need to answer the question 'what is a submap and why do you use it?'
- Scott; we actually have image submaps, to reuse images
- Dawn; my question is; is that user guide stuff or not? we could use explanations.
- Kris; primary audience is developers building DITA implementations. we don't need to explain how to use submaps, but important to know what happens to navtitles on submaps for processing.
- Dawn; we definitely need that.
- Eric; also need to explain the use of format @ when defining keys for anything that isn't a DITA topic or map, it needs to be used properly, or causes a whole bunch of issues.
- Robert; there is a fine line; could be 'here's the things you can do with your map.' If we don't give a hierarchical structure of a map, it's hard to understand piecemeal.
- Kris; I'm thinking that we have good content that's more user guide material, wrt maps, using DITAVAL, etc. could be starting points for what we need. DITA map @s, where they're written in a way that work as spec, but define hierarchy, provide context for key resolution. Originally, the topics were written user guide style. If you think about developers producing implmentations; @format is critical. a map represents a bigger web of content than what's just in the map.
- Dawn; also reltables, establishing reltable hierarchy.
- Kris; comes back tp DITA 1.0 spec, there were tons of examples of reltables, but they're all in example topics or langref topics; some of it has to be in the langref topics, but it can't be only there.for figuring how how to implement it.
- Robert; yes, a lot of 1.0 stuff was written in examples, rather than as rules.
- Bob; Jarno was at one time had difficulty with what?
- Robert; good question, chunking was always my biggest problem; I'll ask him what his biggest problemwas... see if he has suggestions.
- Bob; we might reach out to Dan Vint; might be still at Ping or not.
- Kris; I can post on dita-users and ask 'as developers, what was hardest thing for you to wrap your mind around? what did you want a better explanation about?
- Bob; wrt IIRDS, they didn't understand why I was abstracting data elements by conrefing them; they didn't understand value of conref.
- Robert; I feel like we do have more info about that, but doesn't mean people read it.
- Kris; if the questions is 'why use conref?' that's a user guide issue.
- Robert; The examples explain how to implement, but not why to use it.
- Kris; on question of DITA map processing, map is an entry point into a large web of content, an app has to walk the tree of everything that is ref'd or targeted. e.g. resolving cross-deliverable links on Mayo website. so Robert;
***ActionItem; Robert will ask Jarno what he found problematical
***ActionItem: Kris will post on dita-users
- Kris; can folks think of other groups to reach out to?
- Bob; maybe DUG users list, or the Github discussion area.
***ActionItem: Bob will post on Github forum and BUG list.
- Kris; imposing roles when ref'ing a map is also pretty icky. what are the sticky questions for that? or not...
- Robert; I haven't looked at them in a while; probably I helped write them; they were kind of reverse engineered from bookmap.
- Kris; and I think we added impose-role @ for 2.0.
- Robert; think you're right
***ActionItem: Kris wil read thru all this content and see if she can produce a better outline to bring back to TC by next week
4. Examples for conditional processing
Dawn: Filtering using group syntax
- Kris; Dawn , have you had a chance to do these
- Dawn; they're open in front of me; finishing up so I can send it
- Kris; great, will be an item on next week's agenda
5. Review of base spec sections
List of not reviewed sections
https://github.com/oasis-tcs/dita/wiki/DITA-2.0-base-specification-work
- Dawn , Eric, and Nancy on items, Dawn and Nancy by next week, Eric by end of August
6. Action items
See Current action items
https://github.com/oasis-tcs/dita/wiki/Action-items
- reviewed July 22nd items, updates
noon ET close
-- Ms. Nancy Harrison
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Nancy Harrison
Principal, Infobridge Solutions
Nancy Harrison (Personal)
978-505-9189
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