Meeting minutes 2017 04 06

Attendance: Radu, Jarno, Bill Gamboa, Bill Burns, Kris, Lief, Robert, Roger, Shane, Bob

Item 1: Any updates about prior releases?

2.4.5 recently released; 2.4.6 now scheduled for April 18, has 3 fixes so far.

So far - more patches for 2.4 than other releases. Seems a good thing, potentially causing lower activity in develop branch but not sure. This is likely because of our 3-week rule (patch should go out 3 weeks from first planned fix).

Item 2: DITA-OT Development status and updates

2.5:

• Robert making progress on supporting DITA inside foreign contexts. Small item, but important for some cases.
• Also working on DITAVAL list mentioned at previous calls; no code checked in yet but aiming for initial implementation in next week.
• Robert would like to work on updates to "rendering directory" parameter, as discussed in previous meetings -- will be next after DITAVAL list
• Final issue that's Robert's customers have been raising priority on -- if you have topics/maps that link outside of map directory (up-and-over links), and cleverly construct your image references, they can end up outside of your designated output directory. Issue originally opened in December: https://github.com/dita-ot/dita-ot/issues/2550
• Jarno's map-first preprocessing has been checked in -- initial version, hoping to get in 2.5 and have people check it out, so that it can become default in 3.0. To test -- change dependency change from preprocess to preprocess2 (would be nice to have better name). Roger requests that lots of help will be needed for documentation on how to test it / what it means. Extension points in preprocess: some are the same, not sure if we should completely replace. Robert, right now, sort of thinks we should rename them all - the process differs, this will force anybody to think about it and reconsider if the extensions are still in the right spot.

Discussion: there are a lot of issues with paths in ditavals (for images). Up-levels + relative + absolute = head spinning.

3.0:

• Jarno wrote some PDF2 code today. It would be nice to fix some of the issues there. [Diversion in to the usual frustration with PDF2, and backwards compatibility, and the time it would take to re-implement.] Roger wonders if the changes in 2.5 should be slightly more extensive -- since we're already telling people about changes. Jarno: maybe chapter heading style / numbering? Every customer seems to do something different, not use the default. Also: don't really like the two column chapter-based TOC; Jarno's customers who use this seem to prefer single-column TOC.

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

Not a lot going on over last couple weeks; Roger's teaching is consuming quite a bit of time lately. Some bit of concern about time to document any big items for 2.5 (particularly preprocess, new Java API). Java API -- readers will expect the JavaDoc, not sure how that mixes with our build. If anybody wants to write up and contribute with text it can be merged with the DITA content later.

Item 4: Other topics

Update on Jarno's platform work / new #platform channel in Slack. Some public discussion about it here: https://twitter.com/jelovirt/status/848875008948490240

Idea is to run DITA-OT as a service; instead of running locally on your client, there's a REST API that can send the job off to a server. Idea isn't to bundle this in DITA-OT, but to make it a separate project. Not intended for average small scale user; it's for CMS systems + big companies that might want to be running 24/7.

Jarno is looking for any level of feedback.

Item 5: DITA-OT Day 2017

Start using that Slack channel to discuss ideas / presentations / proposals / calls for proposals / etc.

Item 6: Backlog discussion

Time to go through pull requests, issues tracker, determine how to handle open issues.