Meeting minutes 2013 10 08

Attendance: George, Radu, Eliot, Robert, Julio, Frank, Jarno

Item 1: Recent development status status

• 1.8.M2 (release 1.8, maintenance release 2) available for download. Expect 1.8.M3 at some point in future, but no plans yet. Have a hotfix branch, one minor item.
• Working on 2.0 ...

Item 2: DITA-OT 2.0

• Jarno's focus on 2.0 for a while now. Focus: fixing things that don't work as well as they should, refactor code for better performance / maintainability / readability. In a large part driven by desire to "fix the code", not as much driven by new features. Some changes that will break backwards compatibility - not everything, but will need greater focus on this for moving to 2.0.
• Issues open in issue tracker for 2.0 to describe items. Also fixing misc tiny bug items that are too small to open trackers for.
• Lots of work on Java code - to use File or URI objects rather than strings. Prepared for that in 1.X by documenting in JavaDoc, but now changing object types. Will make it easier to change code.
• Other things we could change: today, checking @copy-to processing. Current pre-process resolves copy-to in topicref, then uses @href and @copy-to during remaining steps. Any reason not to rewrite @copy-to to @href during preprocess? Disappears, from perspective of plug-in developer. Robert has often wondered this and thinks it would be OK to change.
• Jarno's attention turned to copy-to due to bug noticed last night, with path2proj. Would be nice to get rid of path2proj as PI, but that's another story (would be nice to pass in to process, rather than storing PI). For the bug noticed with path2proj, Robert already has issue open: https://github.com/dita-ot/dita-ot/issues/1563
• Current problem - code is not working on Windows for some cases - this has prevented an upload of M1 test build. Needs to be fixed before releasing a milestone. Eliot could help out on a Windows virtual machine. Robert should have some ability to help as well. Frank's only issue is time.
• Questions about integration tests - running at Travis - would like to get some doc about this for people wanting to come and help / contribute / tweak / etc - tell people how to use it. Problem with Travis is - only tests on Linux because they don't have Win licenses.
• Reminder - XSLT 2.0 in the code.
• As well all know - PDF code needs a lot of love / refactoring. Might be easier to rewrite from scratch but nobody has resources right now. "Change everything that is wrong" would essentially mean a new transform. Eliot would vote for starting from scratch. Julio has concerns about tossing out current work from AH, others.

Schedule: not sure of release date for 2.0 - want it ASAP, but lots to consider. When 2.0 is frozen, means API is frozen. Ant as well, if we consider those APIs. Not ready to do that yet.

Item 3: Documentation changes

• Note that the doc this time will need to focus on backwards incompatibilities.
• Expect to give more info about sample plug-ins
• Julio can help out as needed.
• Note - if changing for 1.8, should put fixes into hotfix/1.8 branch; doc changes for 2.0 should go into develop branch.
• Doc is now stored at github - increasing the automation but there is still some manual work.

Item 4: DITA-OT User list

Attempting to move some traffic from dita-users over to Google Group. Please join if you have not already.

Other topics

• Discussion of going to Apache Foundation - Jarno comments, probably would not qualify as project there - not enough developers. We have a lot of users, but few dedicated developers. Using Apache probably would not automatically bring in companies to give developers (just skeptical). Big plus would be improving the license agreement, but otherwise uncertain. Eliot: started the thread because there seems to be a barrier to contributions. Most users are from companies; so needs to be way for companies to contribute. Something like Apache - org with governance, and clearly established legal organization. Can you take advantage of Apache to take that money, or do you need to create something new.
• Any DITA 1.3 features we can start implementing? Pre-release or PoC? Probably. Eliot has been implementing at least HTML plug-ins for his new features. Those could be collected and used. Biggest feature will be scoped keys. That's now solid enough that we could look at implementation - figure out what it would mean in OT. Jarno has been cleaning up key processing, hoping that makes scopes easier. Other big change: cross deliverable linking.

Next meeting: November 5. Meeting invite already sent.