Meeting minutes 2015 03 05

Attendance: Eliot, Roger, George, Jarno, Eric

Item 1: Any updates about prior releases?

Nothing planned at the moment. Will presumably have a 2.0.2 at some point.

Eliot: submitted pull request that includes enhancements to table processing in HTML to better handle measurement values - such as measures in MM. Also wondering about syncing up processing of widths in PDF and HTML. Jarno: some of that could ideally be pushed earlier in preprocess so that common table processing can be figured out before we get to XSLT for a particular step. Could place coordinates of cells, for example, into an attribute so it's easy to pick up later. Messiest part of current HTML table code deals with accessibility - figure out what column / row any given cell is at, which is very ugly with recursive XSL logic; that sort of thing might be better in preprocess, add info to namespaced attribute. Discussing dynamic filtering based on pushed-through metadata like @product; doing that with spans gets very complex. Sum: as we move forward - Eliot has code that might help with table improvements.

Eliot logged a couple bugs last week with how DITA-OT handles navigation topicref with a key, also points to a topic. One case involves copy-to. [Discussion of processing orders: copy-to, push conref, key space construction. There are very messy edge cases that the spec does not specifically address, such as pushing into map which modifies other map processing. Some of these would seem very poor markup but spec does not forbid; not everything can be supported in every order.]

Item 2: DITA-OT 2.1 status and updates

Next major release - milestone posted that enables Jarno's Markdown-as-input plugin. Markdown as output plugin also now available for testing. Not intending them to be part of the core DITA-OT release but want to make it easier to get them as plug-ins.

General goal: 2.1 release mid-year. What will be the big features? More removal of old stuff, lots of collected small items, new design that enables markdown plugins, and new features related to documentation generation. With current status of 1.3 at OASIS, unlikely to be major new 1.3 support in a summer release.

Item 3: Update on Slack as team communication tool

Several of us are more actively using Slack for team communication. It has several channels for DITA-OT related activities, and you can also send private direct messages to other team members. This week we changed the channels around a bit to make it more useful for things often covered in this call. Existing channel #general has been modified so that it no longer gets all of the auto-updates from github; those now appear on the #development channel. You can use #general to discuss anything DITA-OT related, anything that would typically come up in this meeting, etc. Jarno, Robert, Eero, and Roger are often online; if you scroll up in the #general channel you can get caught up on any discussions that interest you. There's also a #documentation channel specifically for doc related discussions.

https://dita-ot.slack.com/messages/general/

Would be nice if the general discussions were open to all, but Slack discussion only visible to members of the project. Still, it's much more convenient than some other methods used in the past. If you're not on Slack / not in the dita-ot project, send a note to Jarno or Robert to get an invitation.

Item 4: Doc updates and plans

Has been a bit slow recently, focus on cleanup items. Remove old unreferenced files, cleanup to URLs.

Item 5: Other topics

Robert may be dropping off for a bit soon. Baby due in mid-April but looking like she wants to make an early appearance. If I'm out by next meeting, hopefully somebody else can take minutes at the April call.

RE: Monthly contributor calls. A few regular attendees have trouble with the Tuesday meeting time. Considering moving to Thursday at same time (the meeting time is not perfect but seems to be the best fit to allow calling in from Finland and Romania). Thursday is better for Roger. Tuesday is generally not good for Kris (immediately before TC) but she's not here today so not sure if Thursday is generally better. Jarno: Thursday means that if any news comes from TC that week it can be shared, so that's convenient. Will plan for now on switching to Thursday - next meeting will be Thursday April 2.

Jarno: looking for feedback on markdown plugins. If bugs, open in issue tracker. General feedback, maybe discuss in Slack. If somebody wants to write it up as a blog entry or article, Jarno open to collaborating. Roger expecting to follow up about that.