Meeting minutes 2016 06 02

Attendance: Robert, Radu, Kris, Eliot, Jarno, Leif, Roger, Shane, Bill Gamboa, Bill Burns, Bob Johnson, Guillaume, Kerry

Item 1: Any updates about prior releases?

2.3 completed last week, released Sunday, announced Sunday / Monday / Tuesday in various venues. Celebrations were heard around the world. Note that the package was automatically built and uploaded by Travis CI - no manual steps to build or deploy.

Radu integrated 2.3 into Oxygen, found two small issues that have been opened, one with temporary file items that is already fixed for 2.3.1. Also noticed a chunking item that affected WebHelp, looking to fix that in the Oxygen code. Otherwise have a couple of very minor items already set for a patch, to be out in about 3 weeks.

Milestone 2.3.1 currently shows target date June 19, Roger will not be available that day, so if we want to release that day, need to have docs done beforehand.

Item 2: DITA-OT 3.0 status and updates

Next major release! Already some ideas:

• Splitting HTML from XHTML - pull request already open. Splits the code, which allows several benefits. Can make major changes in the new HTML code without breaking any existing XHTML customizations. Can restructure the XSL itself (flatten import tree). Can make improvements in the future without worry about how it affects legacy.
• Question: would others find HTML output that leaves out headers (only uses ) would be useful? Not too difficult as a customization, would be really more of an "HTML Fragment" output rather than HTML5.
• PDF improvements? Several likely, Robert has many planned / expected that are more like "fix" items than features.
• Refactoring of preprocess modules
• Jarno hoping to upgrade to Java 8, which is overdue, Java 7 already out of date
• Some discussion about moving to new Saxon, but have Java extensions in a few spots (ODT, RTF) that rely on the old Saxon, and have found performance issues with latest version
• Kris brings up troubleshooting topic - has heard from many in the tech writing community that it's desperately needed. For good output it really needs generated strings / headings, but we currently have those only for English. Long discussions of how to handle strings that are not translated initially. Is there much value in DITA-OT shipping pre-translated strings, if anybody who is translating will be getting the default strings translated anyway?
• Removing plugins that are basically unsupported: docbook, WordRTF, Eclipse Content transform type, "Eclipse Map Specialization" are all candidates.

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

New style on dita-ot.org. Robert really likes it.

Roger eager to accept changes, ideas, suggestions about updates to docs.

Dev version of docs now has "edit" link -- a tiny pencil in the footer at the moment -- which opens that topic in Oxygen WebAuthor, lets people contribute change requests. Lets people create / use their fork, create / use the branch, create a pull request. Trying it out now to see how it goes; don't know yet if this will be good, if it will overwhelm Roger with pull requests - all to be seen.

Item 4: DITA-OT Day 2016

November 13 in Munich. Time to get planning!

Item 5: Other topics

Discussion of PDF2 - new issues, new Slack channel, where is it going for 3.0?

Item 6: Backlog discussion

How to handle issues relating to: ODT, WordRTF, DocBook? No active maintainer for any of these, issues have come in so there must be some usage, but guessing it is minimal.