[docbook] DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 18 Mar 2003

[Norman Walsh <ndw at nwalsh dot com>]

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| DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 18 Mar 2003
| ========================================================
|
| The DocBook Technical Committee will met on Tuesday, 18 Mar 2003
| at 01:00p EST (10:00a PST, 18:00GMT, 19:00CET, 03:00JST+) 
| for 90 minutes.
[...]
| Agenda
|
| 1. Roll call

Steve Cogorno
Paul Grosso
Dick Hamilton
Nancy Harrison
Scott Hudson
Mark Johnson
Bob Stayton
Norman Walsh

Absent:

Michael Smith

Norm explains ongoing problems with OASIS mail/web servers.

| 2. Accepting the minutes of the previous meeting

Accepted.

| 3. Review of the agenda

Accepted.

| 4. Review of open action items {5 min}
|
|     a. Norm to follow-up on RFE 562343: <packagename> element
Continued.
|     b. Norm to write better documentation for option/optional
Continued.
|     c. Norm to post simplified ToC proposal to the list again
Continued.
|     d. Steve to provide a first draft of a requirements document for task/topic.
Completed.
|     e. Mike to post summary of annotations.
Completed.
|     f. Dick to ask local expert about annotations.
Completed.
|     g. Bob to post concrete example of associate purposes with components in
|            refentries (Allow reference within refentry)
Completed.

ACTION: Norm to make an agenda item for next month.

|     h. Norm to propose a new content model for mediaobjectco to bring
|            it back in sync with mediaobject
Continued.
|     i. Bob to amend the RFE 558443 (storage info in metadata) and then close it
Completed.
|     j. Mike to summarize the URL/URN markup issue and propose a new URI element with
|            appropriate attribute names and values
Completed.
|     k. Norm to ask Tony/Paul for a summary of what is missing from
|            DocBook to support proper mixed bidi text.
Completed.

ACTION: Norm to post concrete proposal for this.

|     l. Norm to put RFE 623524 ((re)consider choicelist markup) on the agenda
Completed.
|     m. Bob to review the list of bibliography elements and see which
|            ones make sense in paragraph. Orgname is requested here, we already
|            allow author and corpauthor. What about others?
|            (Related to REF #679316 Allow orgname tag within paragraphs)
Completed.

ACTION: Norm to make an agenda item for next month.

|     n. Norm to ask Denis Evans for his opinions on REF #686733, allow
|             bibliography under <refentry>
Continued.
|     o. Norm to put releaseing 4.3 or 5.0 or whatever's next on the agenda
Completed.

4b. HTML tables in DocBook

Paul: My understanding was that I'd made my case and it was rejected.
I still believe what I believe, but I'm happy to go with whatever the
TC wants to decide. The more important question is how the TC wants to
respond to other public comment.

Bob: I was thinking about the idea of cutting and pasting because of
the content models inside the table cells. That doesn't work because
of markup in the cells. In my corpus, most tables have markup. You'd
have to do a conversion anyway. Subsequent discussion has indicated
that it's just the element names that need to be allowed, they just
want a familiar set of tags.

Nancy: If people want to use HTML tag names, they still have a
different structure. The structure they're used to using those tag
names in won't work anyway.

Bob: You can form a table and use the HTML tag names until you get
into the cell content.

Norm: It is true that the tables could be identical if there was no
entry-level markup. And there would be more presentational attributes
in the HTML case.

Steve: I think if we put an implementation in, we're still going to
get complaints because users are used to being able to do a wide
variety of things that wouldn't be valid.

Steve/Paul debate the merits of supporting users or tools.

Nancy: Cut and paste isn't going to work in either direction.

Paul: What are we trying to do here? 

Steve: We already get a lot of questions about what to do with markup,
if we look at it as a recommendation of good tagging structure, we can
give good advice.

Norm argues that the mental transition from XHTML to CALS is
significant and a body of users would find DocBook easier to learn if
they didn't have to make that transition.

Nancy: My recollection is that the way that we propose it's
implemented you would choose one or another model.

Bob: But the DTD couldn't enforce it.

Norm: The DTD can't enforce every model, but it isn't that bad.

Bob: What about htable?

Norm: htable would still have to contain tbody.

Steve: Is the 5.0 DTD going to be XML only? Couldn't we use namespaces?

Norm: Most people are using DTDs and I don't think we can abandon that
for a while.

Norm: I'm concerned that people will make a non-interoperable DTD to
support XHTML tables.

Some discussion of what interoperable and subsets mean.

Nancy: Can we take a straw poll on whether people are willing to
include HTML tables or not?

Dick: That would depend on how it's implemented.

Discussion of Paul's proposal.

Norm: If we used the Strict HTML, then you wouldn't get the
presentational attributes.

Straw Poll: Are you willing to include XHTML tables in DocBook along
the lines of Paul's earlier proposed DTD changes?

Steve Cogorno   N
Paul Grosso     Y
Dick Hamilton   Y
Nancy Harrison  Y
Scott Hudson    Y
Mark Johnson    Y (with reservations)
Bob Stayton     Y
Norman Walsh    abstain

Nancy: I think we've had a new data point, the users have asked us and
so I think the users have demonstrated that it's important.

ACTION: Paul to review how his proposal would change if we went with Strict
instead of Transitional.

| 5. Releasing V4.3 or V5.0

Bob: I'd like to see a list of all the things we've approved and see
if any of them require 5.0.

ACTION: Norm to produce that summary.

Bob: This also has implications for announcing 6.0.

Steve: Can we do both? Release 4.3 and 5.0.

Bob: The distinction is that we'd do the approved changes that aren't
backwards compatible in 4.3.

Proposal: Release 4.3 sooner rather than later.

(General agreement)

Dick: I have mixed feelings, 4.3 is easier to sell here, but at the
same time I understand your concerns about getting to a 5.0.

Proposed: Move discussion until next month.

| 6. Choicelist markup

ACTION: Norm to put on the agenda for next month.

| 7. Annotations

Dick: The presentational questions were some of our thoughts. The
biggest reason we would use would be to provide an HTML title-like
format. This introduces some co-constraint issues: you might want to
have the content model only contain #PCDATA if the class attribute was
title.

Bob: What other uses does it have? It seems like structure could be useful.

Norm: Yes, I think you'd need to allow structure even if it could make
for problematic display in some circumstances.

Paul: We need to make sure that we know what we're doing. I'm
particularly concerned about some of the presentational expectations.

Post to docbook list (not docbook-tc) for email discussion.

ACTION: Norm to put on the agenda for next month.

| 8. Review of Requests for Enhancement
|
|    To browse a specific RFE, enter the URL (on one line):
|
|      http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&;
|      group_id=21935&atid=384107&aid=XXXX
|
|    where XXXX is the RFE number.
|
|      691762 syntax=""

Mailing list archive is inaccessible. Return to this item next week.

|      697374 marking up keycaps according to their semantics

Norm summarizes the RFE.

Bob: It seems like there's a semantic meaning associated with certain
keys that isn't captured by the sequence of characters on the
keyboard.

Steve: There are a lot of keys. It's going to be a really long list.

Dick: We could start with the intersection and leave an escape hatch.

ACTION: Bob to write concrete proposal.

|      698844 Add PDF to notation.class

Accepted.

|      705246 html/docbook.xsl should generate <!DOCTYPE>

Misfiled.

ADJOURNED.

|      436067 splitting tech.char.class 
|      473365 Allow optional in funcprototype 
|      482818 Simplify ToC content model 
|      514435 Allow reference within refentry 
|      541444 caption in mediaobjectco 
|      558443 include storage info in metadata 
|      562343 <packagename> element 
|      565637 Associate non-inline image with link 
|      565716 URL and URN markup 
|      573419 Add bidirectional text overrides 
|      582822 VARARG and FUNCDEF together 
|      623524 (Re)Consider "choicelist" markup 
|      638456 RFE add a <translator> tag
|      655526 funcprototype enhancement
|      660044 Controlling line numbering in verbatims
|      679316 Allow orgname tag within paragraphs
|      686733 allow bibliography under <refentry>
|
|     The following RFEs are awaiting action items
|
|      413389 Enhance METHODNAME and VARNAME 
|      431411 RFE 70: add generic linking capability
|      522552 Add title attribute to <ulink> element
|      574880 Add annotation element 
|      613293 Generalize programlisting 
|      621564 New element Task and children
|
|     The following RFEs are identified as V6.0 or later
|
|      531851 Remove inline person name elements
|      532088 Remove RevHistory from qandaentry


                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

- -- 
Norman Walsh <ndw at nwalsh dot com>      | Everything in the universe goes by
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | indirection. There are no straight
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | lines.--Emerson
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