Meeting minutes 2016 08 04

Attendance: George Bina, Robert Anderson, Radu Coravu, Bill Gamboa, Bob Johnson, Leif Erickson, Jarno Elovirta

Item 1: Any updates about prior releases?

Jarno merged a pull request from Eero (small fix), have fixed a couple bugs, one with xref inside shortdesc. Branch was created ages ago but first fixes didn't go in until just recently so probably should start the clock on the 3 week patch window.

Item 2: DITA-OT 3.0 status and updates

Jarno has been working on chunking [a never-ending battle]. Long term goal / reason is aiming for map-first processing and better file name handling.

Discussion of PDF: not seeing many backwards compatibility issues there with 3.0; most items are in preprocessing / HTML5. Jarno also expecting 2.3 to be "stable" for a while, probably will continue to be patched after 3.0 and maybe 3.1 as long as we have resources to do so.

Other items discussed:

• Release of 3.0 - target DITA-OT day, but if something not quite done, can just demo / preview it and release a bit later
• map first processing - long term goal, probably won't get there fully for 3.0, but will set up the basics and may have it ready for 3.1 (probably as an opt-in feature)
• separate plugins into own repos (actual goal: could develop or release PDF independently of DITA-OT; but expect that DITA-OT release would grab latest of each shipped plugin and continue to bundle them) - probably longer term thought, some are not too excited about this
• Rumors of a new Xerces release - Jarno saw a tweet but George hasn't heard about it

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

Roger not on call; notified earlier that there are not many major updates this month.

Item 4: DITA-OT Day 2016

November 13 in Munich

Have 9 proposals now, some new supporters. DITA Europe extended their deadline for proposals to the 14th; we should do the same.

Item 5: Other topics

Bob asking about accessibility - make a couple of suggestions in the past. 1) suggestion about related links (use divs instead of lists), 2) use of ">" character in menu cascades could be wrapped in an abbreviation tag to help screen readers. Don't think these got logged; best course is to open a separate issue for each. Jarno agrees about links - could definitely improve the structures, particularly in HTML5; nervous about changes in XHTML because so many have extended it.