1. OASIS DITA for Business Documents Sub-committee Highlights of Work to Date Focus Areas and Future Work Michael Boses Jul 07 2008

2. CLASSIFICATION Highlights of Work to Date

3. Characteristics Is it a narrative? Narrative complexity Document length Tree depth Tree balance Table frequency Table complexity Graphic frequency XML vocabularies Transclusions

4. Business DocumentsTabular ReportsFormsNarrative Documents

5. DEFINITIONS Highlights of Work to Date

6. Definitions Narrative Business Document – A bounded collection – of compound elements – of natural written language – that present ideas and/or facts – relating to a business process – Discussion items: Whether structural semantics plays here or elsewhere Whether graphical representation belongs at all-even as a historical reference

7. Definitions Document Section – A defined entity that bounds a set of content to establish its semantic relationship to the document as a whole Content Pattern – The repeated arrangement of pre-determined (in some way limited) content elements within a section of a document, or – The arrangement of sections within a document

8. OASIS DITA for Business Documents Sub-committee Focus Areas and Future Work

9. Focus Areas Aggregated Topic Editing – Treating a collection of topics as a “document” for authoring purposes Domain Specializations – Handling the structural differences between the domain of business documents and technical documents Structural Specializations – Are there basic topic types that apply to a broad range of business documents (e.g. concept, task, reference) Business Document Meta Model – The development of a generalized model of business document structure Content Management Model – What are the derived requirements created by our BusDocs DITA standards

10. Scheduling Deliverables DITA 1.3 DITA 1.4 DITA 1.5 Aggregated Topic Editing

11. AGGREGATED TOPIC EDITING Focus Area

12. Topic Aggregation DITA Map – Used to aggregate topics for publishing – We suggest that for business documents, maps can be used to aggregate documents for editing – The reverse is that maps can be created from a new or edited documents when they are saved

13. Maps for Business Documents If a map is used to aggregate topics for editing, what document definition should be used for the aggregated document? – ditabase.dtd – nested topics – a hybrid of map and topic – other ideas?

14. Maps for Business Documents If the user is creating a new document what map would best represent the document? – master map only – master map and sub maps What rules (if any) should influence the creation of one or more maps?

15. Maps for Business Documents What rules (if any) should control the “bursting” of the document into topics? – Should all narrative content be in topics, or should some reside in a map? – Should nested topics be eliminated for business documents, discouraged as a best practice, or are they important?

16. Maps for Business Documents What map/topic hierarchy best represents mixed content in a section? – Section Paragraph Section – Paragraph /Section Paragraph Section…

17. BusDoc Map Do we need a special map for business documents, analogous to Book Map? If so, should it (and can it) follow conventions established in Book Map?

18. DOMAIN SPECIALIZATIONS Focus Area

19. Structural Characteristics Basic Business Document Structure – Are topics and sections equivalent? When, if ever, is a topic not a section? When, if ever, is a section not a topic? – Can any problems encountered in aligning topics and sections be solved with other DITA structures, such as maps? – Are mandatory topic titles a problem for business documents?

20. Structural Characteristics Nested Sections – Are nested sections necessary for business documents? What would they solve? What would still be a problem? – What is the impact of having to close the body of a topic before nesting another topic? – Is there a need for something like a “body continue?”

21. Structural Characteristics Footnotes, etc. – End notes Where do they live in a dynamic document? What happens on reuse of a topic that references an end-note? – Table notes – Multiple references to the same note – Author control over numbering

22. Structural Characteristics Tables of Contents, Tables of Tables, Tables of Figures, etc. – Can these be sufficiently handed today? – Should there be specializations that represent these during authoring? – Should the author be able to control publishing? How? What are the limits?

23. Structural Characteristics – Review Are commenting and track-changes a requirement for business documents? Can these be implemented through specialization or do they require extensions to the standard?

24. STRUCTURAL SPECIALIZATIONS Focus Area

25. Structural Specialization Generic Business Document Infotypes – Are there business document parallels to concept, task, and reference? Purpose Background …

26. Structural Specialization Generic Business Document Infotypes – What is the rationale for creating basic infotypes as a work product of the sub-committee? Would the provision of business document infotypes help DITA adoption? What guiding principles would be used to select infotypes and design topics for them?

27. Structural Specialization Generic Business Document Infotypes – How well do business concepts and business references harmonize with the current techpub- derived infotypes? – Is there a case for specializing from the three primary infotypes or should the effort start with topic?

28. DOCUMENT META MODEL Focus Area

29. Document Meta Model Both a theoretical and practical exercise Can only be partially guided by direct analysis of documents Suggests the need to define structural semantics at the document and page level Interacts with the science of semantics and the industry of typography

30. Document Meta Model Important to establish the role of structure in relating semantics – especially since the author is relinquishing control over formatting Necessary to define a wide range of document structures that have no name and are difficult to discuss

31. CONTENT MANAGEMENT MODEL Focus Area

32. Content Management What are the basic requirements that define the management of documents and document objects in relationship to DITA business documents? – Library services – Referential integrity – Link management – Other…

33. Focus Areas Aggregated Topic Editing – Treating a collection of topics as a “document” for authoring purposes Domain Specializations – Handling the structural differences between the domain of business documents and technical documents Structural Specializations – Are there basic topic types that apply to a broad range of business documents (e.g. concept, task, reference) Business Document Meta Model – The development of a generalized model of business document structure Content Management Model – What are the derived requirements created by our BusDocs DITA standards

34. Next Steps: Focus Areas Aggregated Topic Editing – Steve Manning –facilitator – Bruce Nevin – Mark Poston – Michael Boses Domain and Structural Specializations – Rob Hanna—facilitator – Mark Lewis – Mark Poston – Ann Rockley – Howard Schwartz – Eric Severson – Noz Urbina Document Meta Model – Michael Boses—facilitator – Rob Hanna – Bruce Nevin – Ann Rockley – Eric Severson – Noz Urbina