RE: [dita] FOR YOUR REVIEW AND APPROVAL: DITA Help Technologies Guide

Title: RE: [dita] FOR YOUR REVIEW AND APPROVAL: DITA Help Technologies Guide

Thanks Stan for your message and the good conversation in the call today. I want to emphasize that I don't doubt the good faith and good intentions of everyone who has been involved in this project. I also apologize for not paying more attention to this project earlier on, so that I could have raised concerns then.

I will work to try to find a constructive compromise that will be good for the DITA community and acceptable to OASIS and JustSystems.

Best regards,

Su-Laine

Su-Laine Yeo

Interaction Design Specialist

JustSystems Canada, Inc.

Office: 778-327-6356



www.justsystems.com

-----Original Message-----

From:  [mailto:]

Sent: Tue 3/10/2009 6:41 AM

To: Su-Laine Yeo; ; 

Cc: ; ; Tony Self

Subject: RE: [dita] FOR YOUR REVIEW AND APPROVAL: DITA Help Technologies Guide

 Hi Su-Laine --

In terms of what is or is not appropriate procedurally for DITA Technical

Committee approval of a DITA Subcommittee (SC) document, I defer entirely

to the TC Chair, the TC, and OASIS.

In terms of this proposed subcommittee publication and others in the

pipeline (preceding and following), I can provide some context ... at

least from my perspective. :-)

Subcommittees should seek approval from their parent TC(s) before they

publish documents for at least three reasons:

1. Sanity check -- Does this proposed publication conform to the goals of

the

subcommittee? Is it appropriate?

2. Sanity check -- Does the proposed publication offer value to the

target

community? In this case our audience consists of  Help authors who use

DITA as their source.

3. Endorsement -- Does the proposed publication reflect positively on the

overall mission of the TC? Would members of the TC promote this

publication in their respective organizations?

The DITA Help SC has updated the TC on its proposed DITA 1.2 and DITA 1.3

goals and activities numerous times:

- DITA 1.2:

> Get organized

> Survey the state of DITA-authored Help

> Educate DITA users about existing solutions (this publication)

- DITA 1.3:

> Continue to educate folks about existing solutions

> Identify and develop specializations and custom processing

that would advance the feature set and usability of

DITA-authored Help.

Before your email last evening, all the feedback that I have received has

been supportive of the content in the DITA Help Technologies Guide and of

approving it at our TC meeting today. There are a couple of nice-to-have

production edits and nice-to-do build improvements (notably DITA 1.2 and

DITA-OT1.5 M11), but otherwise what is before the TC represents the best

effort of the Help Subcommittee. I continue to recommend that we discuss

and approve it today.

Thanx,

Stan

  ----- Original Message -----

  From: "Su-Laine Yeo"

  To: , 

  Cc: , , "Tony Self"

  Subject: RE: [dita] FOR YOUR REVIEW AND APPROVAL: DITA Help

  Technologies Guide

  Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 18:07:57 -0700

  I should rephrase my earlier comment: I can see this type of document

  as

  being valuable, but I am unconvinced that an OASIS committee should

  publish this kind of document. I've read the DHSC Statement of

  Purpose

  here:

  http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=dita-help

  and

  I don't see how this draft guide fits.

  Su-Laine

  Su-Laine Yeo

  Interaction Design Specialist

  JustSystems Canada, Inc.

  Office: 778-327-6356

  

  www.justsystems.com

  -----Original Message-----

  From: Su-Laine Yeo [mailto:]

  Sent: Monday, March 09, 2009 3:09 PM

  To: ; 

  Cc: ; ; Tony Self

  Subject: RE: [dita] FOR YOUR REVIEW AND APPROVAL: DITA Help

  Technologies

  Guide

  Thanks Stan. I can see this type of document as being valuable, and I

  am

  glad the Help Subcommitee took the initiative.

  However, I question the value of having the DITA TC give their

  approval

  of this document. What is "approval" by the TC intended to convey to

  the public who reads the document? The TC members are not necessarily

  experts in the technologies described in this guide. Much of the

  factual

  information in the draft guide is impossible for individual DITA TC

  members to test and verify for themselves in a reasonable timeframe,

  as

  verification would depend on extensive experience with a very wide

  range

  of technologies, some of which are expensive and some of which have

  not

  yet been released. The guide also contains predictions along the

  lines

  of, "Such and such a group will be using technology x in the future",

  which we obviously also cannot verify.

  Another thing that "approval" could mean is that the TC considers the

  opinions expressed in the document, and the amount of emphasis given

  to

  various products, to be free of bias towards particular vendors. I am

  not at all convinced that this is true; the fact that some

  product-specific sections are written by people who work for the

  product

  vendor would indicate otherwise.

  It's great that you've given the TC the opportunity to review this

  document, however the word "approval" is problematic for me.

  Best regards,

  Su-Laine

  Su-Laine Yeo

  Interaction Design Specialist

  JustSystems Canada, Inc.

  Office: 778-327-6356

  

  www.justsystems.com

  -----Original Message-----

  From:  [mailto:]

  Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 10:43 AM

  To: 

  Cc: ; ; Tony Self

  Subject: [dita] FOR YOUR REVIEW AND APPROVAL: DITA Help Technologies

  Guide

  Hi all --

  The DITA Help Subcommittee submits for your review and approval

  Release

  1.0 of our DITA Help Technologies Guide. We appreciate that members

  of

  the TC are swamped with DITA 1.2 specification work, but we hope that

  we

  could get your approval of this document in two weeks time (Tuesday,

  March 10). We plan to update this Guide every 3 - 4 months to keep it

  current.

  I have attached a PDF2 version of the document with Acrobat Reader

  commenting enabled. MS HTML Help and TOCJSBIS versions are available

  at:

  http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita-help/documents.php

  Check out the nifty OASIS-branded HTML that Tony Self (Help

  Subcommittee

  chair) has integrated with his WinANT tool.

  If someone with write privileges to the Adoption TC email list could

  forward this email and attachment, we would appreciate it.

  Thanx,

  Stan Doherty

  DITA Help Subcommittee, Secretary

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------

  To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that

  generates this mail. Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at:

  https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php