Meeting minutes 2016 03 03

Attendance: Robert, Jarno, George, Roger, Kris,

Item 1: Any updates about prior releases?

Jarno would like to get 2.2.3 out ASAP, has a fix for key scope cascading + branch filtering. Has a few other fixes as well. Some open fixes that would be nice to get in, but Jarno hasn't had time. Biggest one is the chunking issue that's been getting a lot of discussion; Jarno has tried to fix in develop branch, but can't port that fix to 2.2.3, would need to redo the fix. Maybe early next week? Robert will scan for any other open issues he has time to fix, Roger will update release notes early next week.

Item 2: DITA-OT 2.3 status and updates

Robert has not added much since last meeting. Jarno's focus has been on LW DITA and PDF Generator, main work on 2.3 has been refactoring of preprocess. Eero has nice pull request to refactor HTML Table processing. Not quite ready yet, because want to add simple tables, but then it has additional specializations with headings and potential for generated empty cells. Eero hoping to finish up this weekend.

Starting to think about release dates; think end of May would be good if we can get all in-progress features completed.

Item 3: Doc updates and plans, update on documentation call

Had active month since last call. Kris and Shane both put in lots of updates, over 20 issues and pull requests.

Considering some bigger re-org of docs; what is there has grown over time without clear plans. For example, beginning to wonder why the user guide / developer guide split -is that meaningful?

Item 4: DITA-OT Day 2016

November 13 in Munich. Oxygen has signed agreement with hotel, same one as last year. TEKOM is week before, ending Thursday; DITA-OT day is Sunday; DITA Europe is Monday/Tuesday. Should probably start discussing topics of interest. Already seems to be focus on HTML5, at least for the bigger presentations.

Roger: one idea, would like to hear about the CSS plugin for paged media. George points out, Radu presented something similar 2 years ago. Jarno adds, both use the topicmerge process to some extent, which is a legacy piece of code that's not optimal. Better merge would probably benefit both. The plugins are similar, but input to the CSS process differs.

Discussion of technical versus managerial or other. Has been nice to have same group of people in room whole time at past events, so don't want to plan on some people at some sessions, some people at others. But if we target the technical things earlier in day, people could arrive Munich Sunday morning and still get the less technical sessions, or vice versa. Will continue to discuss.

Item 5: Other topics

Should our front page be more visual? Have something more marketing oriented, that could draw people in? We don't have a UI so can't do something with screen shots like a lot of product landing pages. Some products say "Here is how you use the product" but our usage is often more design-your-own.

Robert will be presenting at DITA North America on DITA-OT 2.x, what's in it and why to move up from 1.x. Jarno suggests noting - philosophy for 1.x was more of development-in-a-bubble, not too fast, not a lot of people had visibility, became more open over time. With 2.x, lot more interest, docs have exploded, everything should be clear / open.

Returning to idea of marketing - DITA-OT doesn't have a marketing department. But we really should be talking more with CMS vendors. We've tried to get them to come to us in the past but haven't had a lot of luck. Jarno has considered writing to them saying "Please come by and say hi" -- after all they're some of our biggest customers. Will plan to discuss in more depth at future meetings.

Item 6: Backlog discussion

Assignment for next meeting: come with a couple of issues or pull requests you'd like to discuss at meeting.