Dawn, I hope that folks will respond on list, not off list.
My personal take is that the audience for Lightweight DITA is
folks for whom DITA 1.3 is just not an option. I would expect
technical communication departments to use the Technical Content
edition and the bookmap/concept/reference/task/troubleshooting
information types.
For me personally, I hope that Lightweight DITA will led to the
following:
Ability to save Google documents as DITA topics
Ability to use a e-mail client and author as DITA topics
I'd like to hear from others about your concerns. I think we --
the DITA TC -- needs to have good answers to the points that you
raise.
Re tables -- Most of my clients use <simpletable>. They
wrap it within <fig> to get a title. I think the full CALS
table, with spanning and other complicated stuff, encourages
writers to use tables for content that should be reworked and
reconsidered.
Best,
Kris
Kristen James Eberlein
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting
www.eberleinconsulting.com
+1 919 682-2290; kriseberlein (skype)
On 6/23/2017 6:45 PM, Dawn Stevens
wrote:
Hi all,
In my review of the document and the copious amounts of
comments made already, I don’t know that I have anything more to
add that hasn’t already been said. I completely agree with most
of the comments made by all.
I have my own personal issues that I’m not sure are worth
discussing, since I am sure they’ve been debated before and I’m
sure people much smarter than me and more experienced in this
area have already had these debates. But for the record, here
are my bigger issues. If anyone wants to respond to me
privately, I’m happy to get more understanding; it certainly
feels that I’m the only one who is struggling with these
fundamentals, and perhaps it’s just indicative of being late to
the party and not really following any of discussions early on
since JoAnn was our representative.
IT stands for information typing. There is no such thing in
lwDITA — everything’s a topic. To me this is part of the
essence of DITA and something I am frequently trying to
educate my clients about — why everything just shouldn’t be a
concept, why it’s important to determine what type of content
you are writing. Now they’re going to have permission to do
just what I’ve taught them not to do.
It seems that what lwDITA boils down to is the elimination
of semantic tagging, which again, has been an entire
educational process — why is it important that it’s not just a
paragraph, but a context paragraph — I’ve worked with my
clients to explain why it’s better to tag content not just on
what it is or how it looks, but what purpose it serves. When
purpose is clear, following the template and structure become
easier, and more consistent. Eliminating semantics in my
opinion opens the door to just having a topic with a bunch of
paragraphs in it, without structure and consistency.
100% of my clients use <table>, not
<simpletable>, to meet their needs. It seems a shame
that this one thing will keep them from an lw solution if they
otherwise wanted the simplicity.
Thanks,
Dawn
