SIGDOC Newsletter
March/June 2004
:: Volume 5, Numbers 1 and 2
Interesting Items
You can find a nice list of interesting articles at ACM
Technews.
OASIS Technical Committee Call for Participation: DITA TC
A new OASIS technical committee (TC) is being formed. The OASIS Darwin
Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Technical Committee has been
proposed by the following members of OASIS: Paul Grosso, Arbortext;
Indi
Liepa, Nokia; Eliot Kimber, Innodata-ISOGEN; Don Day, Michael Priestley,
and Dave Schell, IBM; and France Baril, JoAnn Hackos, Debbie Aleyne
Lapeyre, and Paul Antonov, Individual members.
The proposal for a new TC meets the requirements of the OASIS TC Process
(see http://oasis-open.org/committees/process.shtml), and is appended
to
this message. The TC name, statement of purpose, scope, list of
deliverables, audience, and language specified in the proposal will
constitute the TC's charter. The TC Process allows these items to be
clarified (revised); such clarifications (revisions), as well as
submissions of technology for consideration by the TC and the beginning
of technical discussions, may occur no sooner than the TC's first meeting.
As specified by the OASIS TC Process, the requirements for becoming
a
member of the TC at the first meeting are that you must 1) be an
employee of an OASIS member organization or an Individual member of
OASIS; 2) notify the TC chair of your intent to participate at least
15
days prior to the first meeting; and 3) attend the first meeting of the
TC. For OASIS members, to register for the TC using the OASIS
collaborative tools, go to the TC's public web page at
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita and click on the button for "
Join This TC" at the top of the page. You may add yourself to the
roster of the TC either as a Prospective Member (if you intend to become
a member of the TC) or an Observer. A notice will automatically be sent
to the TC chair, which fulfills requirement #2 above.
OASIS members may also join the TC after the first meeting. Note that
membership in OASIS TCs is by individual, and not by organization.
Non-OASIS members may read the TC's mail list archive, view the TC's
web
page, and send comments to the TC using a web form available on the TC's
web page; click the "Send A Comment" button. The archives of
the TC's
mail list and public comments are visible at
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives.
Further information about the topic of this TC may be found on the Cover
Pages under "Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA)" at
http://xml.coverpages.org/dita.html.
back to top Statement of Purpose
The purpose of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee (TC) is to define
and
maintain the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and to
promote the use of the architecture for creating standard information
types and domain-specific markup vocabularies.
DITA is specializable, which allows for the introduction of specific
semantics for specific purposes without increasing the size of other
DTDs, and which allows the inheritance of shared design and behavior
and
interchangeability with unspecialized content. More specific semantics
allow:
* more automatable processes
* more consistent authoring
* better retrievability
* better applicability to specific groups
The work of this TC will differ from similar efforts such as DocBook
because of...
* broader scope, inasmuch as DITA applies to more areas than just technical
manuals
* more specific scope, inasmuch as DITA applies to topic-oriented information
rather than all
technical manuals.
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Scope of Work
The TC will create specifications for the Darwin Information Typing
Architecture suitable for submitting for balloting by OASIS membership
for OASIS standard status.
DITA is an XML-based specification for modular and extensible
topic-based information. DITA provides a model for defining and
processing new information types as specializations of existing types.
DITA populates the model with an extensible hierarchy of standard types.
DITA encourages reuse by reference either of topics or of fragments of
topics. DITA topics:
* can be assembled in different combinations for many deliverables or
output formats
* are optimized for navigation and search
* are well suited for concurrent authoring and content management
Through use of a common specification, DITA content owners can benefit
from industry support, interoperability, and reuse of community
contributions. At the same time, through specialization, content owners
can address the specific requirements of their business or industry.
This committee builds upon the foundation established by the work of
IBM
on DITA.
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