Presentation to the opening meeting of DITA Consortium Japan, March 2009 (by video). Minor update to DITA 1.2 expected approval date.

1. State of DITA: What is happening with DITA at the OASIS DITA Technical Committee and beyond Don R. Day Presentation for opening meeting, DITA Consortium Japan, March 2009

3. The DITA TC Charter

4. Current issues

5. The DITA Roadmap

7. 1980s: GML BookMaster is IBM’s first markup language

8. 1994: SGML IBMIDDoc introduced to replace GML Bookmaster

9. 1999: “XML Workgroup” initiated to explore how the then-new XML standard should fit into IBM’s publishing future

10. 2001: first version of DITA was published on developerWorks; first internal pilots started

11. 2002: DITA introduced IDWB for beta use

12. 2003: DITA formally first released in IDWB, rollout in ID begins

13. 2004: IBM contributed the DITA specification to OASIS

14. “ and the rest is history….”

15. DITA at OASIS

17. Began as XML Open, ostensibly to balance the trend towards “de facto” standards

18. Oriented towards support of standards for Vertical Industries

19. Was the home of DocBook and ODF standards at the time we were looking for a standards home for DITA

21. e-Commerce, Law & Government, Localisation,

22. Security, SOA Standards Adoption, Supply Chain,

23. Web Services, XML Processing

25. http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita/charter.php

27. Tools vendors

28. Consultants

29. Translation community

31. Vendors offering XML authoring or development products;

32. XML architects and developers who design and write XML applications;

33. Information developers and information architects

35. DITA Learning and Training Content Specialization Subcommittee

36. DITA Machine Industry Specialization Subcommittee

37. DITA Semiconductor Information Design Subcommittee

38. DITA for Enterprise Business Documents Subcommittee

39. DITA Help Subcommittee

40. DITA for Technical Standards Subcommittee

42. Local DITA User Groups

44. Demonstrating interoperability with other standards

46. DITA 1.0 is the formalization of the DITA DTDs and Schemas contributed by IBM to OASIS in 2004.

47. The goal of development through the 1.x series of releases is to add function while maintaining backwards compatibility with previous 1.x releases. The DITA TC has collected and prioritized a number of requirements based on known shortcomings, user requests, and relationship with other standards and industry trends.

48. Starting with DITA 1.1, backwards-compatible updates will be released peridically.

49. Backwards-compatible bug fixes will be released from time to time as Candidate Releases keyed to just-previous approved standards. The last such release was DITA 1.0.1 in the fall of 2005.

52. Booklist function for generating collections of content

53. Transitional text in the bookmap

54. Indexing (See, See Also; sort order; page range)

55. Image scaling expanded specification

57. Universality of “universal” attributes

58. <data> element as archetype for structured metadata, content

59. <unknown> element for foreign content vocabularies such as MathML and SVG

61. Architecture (improvements/reconciliations for content models, conref; introduce full keyref and implicit linking)

62. Elements/content models (introduce elements for content attributes, keyword nesting, revised section capabilities)

63. Attributes (minor tweaks)

64. Additional Book-related (ANSI warning labels, xNAL address domain)

65. Specializations (glossary entry and definition)

68. Compliance with other XML standards and practices that have become commonplace during the DITA 1.x lifecycle

69. DITA in Real World use

71. Additional use for project documentation and team docs

74. Global Promotions and Announcements

75. Client Self Assist (in prototype)

78. Research In Motion (Blackberry)

79. Cisco, Citrix, VMware, Xerox

80. Freescale

81. Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corporation

82. These are just examples from an upcoming conference!

84. Encouraging specialization activities (new topic types, domains)

85. Book-oriented major update for DITA 1.1 this summer

86. Continued work against existing list for 1.2 through this year

87. Continued focus on innovation and interoperability