Meeting minutes 2018 03 01

Attendance: Radu Coravu, Jarno Elovirta, Bob Johnson, Frank Wegmann, John Pashley, Keith Shengili-Roberts, Kris Eberlein, Lief Erickson, Robert Anderson, Shane Taylor, Eric Sirois, Roger Sheen, Eliot Kimber, Bill Gamboa

Item 1: Any updates about prior releases?

3.0.3 is collecting fixes: https://github.com/orgs/dita-ot/projects/3

Biggest item in 3.0.3 so far is probably a fix for <navtitle> in maps, which Robert hit while trying to test out migrating DITA 1.3 markup that is deprecated. Roger also hit a related but more specific issue with <navtitle> inside topics, Robert hopes to fix as well.

Still nothing in plan for a 2.5 hotfix. Have been a few general questions about it but no requests for specific fixes already in 3.0.

• Radu saw that PDF customizations do not fix in 3.0 -- not sure if needs fix to allow people to migrate. Radu reproduced on Windows. Catalogs that refer to the customization folder are no longer taken into account: https://github.com/dita-ot/dita-ot/issues/2835
• This again brings up the issue we've discussed previously that we do not have a good regression test method for PDF
• Robert will take a look at that

Radu also ran into a bug with Windows, if DITA-OT is in a deep folder structure it no longer works -- the env.bat file used to set up the environment hits Windows path limit. Radu has some ideas how to fix. The file concatenates classpath which is now so long that it breaks when DITA-OT is is deeply nested in folder structure. Quick fix might be to check if we really need all these JAR files (biggest set is from Markdown parser, which adds a lot but not sure all are required). Could also happen with anybody who creates their own plugins with JAR contributions. And will get worse over time as more extensions come in.

In our own docs, Roger has another couple of issues, such as <part> that refers to map, and a <coderef> issue that works for HTML but not for PDF (may be related to hashed names in preprocess2).

Tentative plan: release 3.0.3 end of next week, a little over a week from today.

Item 2: DITA-OT 3.1 Development status and updates

3.1 project board: https://github.com/orgs/dita-ot/projects/1

• Anything coming yet for DITA 2.0? Lots of things making progress (idea of new base <include> element, chunking redesign), but no new elements / features far enough along to implement yet.
• Jarno started a chat with George about his Jing modifications to support RNG - would like to ship that in 3.1 so it begins working out of the box. Best solution would be if Jing merges his pull request and we just ship that. If not, would have to ship patched version (our own fork of Jing).
• Jarno playing with idea of changing how we call XSLT to use native Saxon methods (S9 API), which would give us a few more long-term options and generally be a better / cleaner design. We're tied to Saxon (can't really go back to Xalan at this point) so might as well continue. Radu comments: would like DITA-OT to continue working with Saxon 9.1 which handles Java extensions, could the S9 API work with that? Jarno thinks not - would mean dropping that support. Some people have used Java extensions extensively for various reasons and are not able to upgrade. Radu checks: Saxon professional edition is currently sixty pounds and is likely enough to support those plugins (enterprise edition is more).

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

Nothing to discuss other than bugs encountered, and discussed above.

Item 4: DITA-OT Day?

Looks like DITA Europe may be in Netherlands this year, per https://twitter.com/comtechdawn/status/968965260983103488

Robert asked about this on Twitter to finally get some small amount of public discussion. Other than Jarno / Roger, only suggestion for actual session was from Jang, who suggested a group or groups doing a hands-on session creating a plugin (possibly ahead of time).

Radu suggests: maybe presentation on small HTML customization, create plugin stub, etc. Sort of like Jang's idea, but not hands on -- one session in front of all.

Leif asks about audience - who is the target? Developers who already write plugins, or people who don't know the toolkit? Robert answers: it's a mix of all, which is generally an issue with a one-day annual conference on such a specific topic. Most years we have at least one session to high-level for the really technical people and at least one session that's too deep for those who have just started.

Frank asks about having two tracks - one for technical and one for beginners? Lots of discussion:

• Roger: that's sort of come up in the past and would be nice way to handle if we could
• Kris talks logistics: that requires two rooms, twice the sessions
• Robert: could maybe split one or two sessions but have others together? Everybody sees the "intro" stuff and what's new, but at some point split while one group does basic "let's create a plugin" and other hears Jarno talk about the darkest corner of the toolkit. Otherwise - two tracks (outside of logistics) would really mean twice the number of sessions and not sure we can manage that.
• Bob asks about streaming with two tracks; did not stream last year, and Radu mentions hard to film two sessions for posting later.
• John: idea of workshops is interesting but logistics probably difficult. Time / logistic constraints seem to make it an excellent forum for questions / presentations. Perhaps knock-on activities? Example: presentation on plugin development, which leads to follow-on ... "Person X presents topic Y" but then information to follow up or use Y after the conference.
• Kris: could also (instead, in addition, etc) have shorter webinars sometime in the year.
• Several people like this idea of recorded webinars. Bill says lots of new customers come in wanting to know how to do things with a plugin so that would help.

[end of meeting]