Help, please! Robert and I are in over our heads in regard to the amount of work. As a TC, let’s talk about ways that the work could be shared over a larger group of people while still maintaining rigorous attention to quality and a consistent
voice.
Some background information about how previous versions of the DITA spec have been edited:
-
DITA 1.0: Largely written within IBM before donation to OASIS. Michael Priestley and JoAnn Hackos are the editors for the
Architectural Specification, and Robert Anderson is the editor of the Language Reference.
-
DITA 1.1: Update to DITA 1.0, same editors.
-
DTA 1.2: Lots of proposals hastily approved, some with serious holes. Major changes required to the architectural content, and work languished for over a year while the TC member tasked with that work struggled with it. Gershon Joseph got the spec source into
OASIS SVN (previously not under version control), and I took on the task of getting TC members to edit/revise/develop sections of content. We used OASIS wiki pages to capture review comments. Architectural specification and the element reference combined in
a single publication for the first time. Finished work, pushed it out the door – But the spec had some serious flaws, due to several factors: Flawed process for DITA 1.2 proposals; involvement of so many people authoring & editing content; lack of review tools
…
- DITA 1.3: Major process changes:
- Source moved to GitHub
- DITAweb selected and used as a review tool
- New process for selecting what goes into the release put in place (current three-stage process)
-
Robert and I perform all the editing work
- DITA 2.0: First backwards-incompatible release, which frees us up to rework a lot of content. Ambitious, but we thought we could manage it, given that we know have good processes in
place. Takes longer than we think …
Best,
Kris
Kristen James Eberlein
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
Owner, Eberlein Consulting LLC
kris@eberleinconsulting.com
Skype: kriseberlein; voice: +1 (919) 622-1501