Hopefully it won't need to be forked for a long time. I have been
waiting for one patch to be applied to the ditaot, which keeps getting
put back in version numbers ( keeps being pushed to the next version
number); although it was supposed to get in a while ago. A portion of
this is due to a couple things. Really some type of easy to use flags
need to be setup for the dita open toolkit for building using various
items. It almost needs to have some type of template based system setup
for the output, although I haven't spent more time than knowing it needs
something. This could be layered on top of the ibm ditaot.
But, to keep things simple, I think a bit more of a conversation with
the ditaot people need to be pursued a bit. I don't think a list of
items is setup to give to them, or ask them about. Although Jeff Levit
I think works closely (or has talked to the ditaot people) in the past.
I don't know what type of communication (if any) they have. I think
another person is involved too :-) (I'll stop at this muddled point).
I think the first thing to do, since I have been too slow getting just
the date patch implemented into ditaot, is get whatever files are
different from the external base, add the diffs, and patch. But without
these patches being out in the public, not everyone can build what is
currently being built. So the main problem is, nobody else can build
the docs the way they are currently being built by those that have Jeff
Levit's mods.
Yes, I have spent a couple hours looking for some older specs that might
be available, so it seems they do need something like an iso purchase
(or wherever they reside). I think the wiki can hold a majority of the
good information, and filter it into a document of documents...
scott
David W. Van Couvering wrote:
I don't know what the "OT" is, but I'm assuming it's some kind of open
source definitions for DITA? Anyway, my general sense is Maven is the
preferred approach, but I have no information beyond that, having
never used Maven.
Are you guys planning to get the OT changes back into the main DITA
source base at some point, or are we always going to have a "fork" of
the OT? What is delaying getting these changes back in?
Regarding a page with references to external specs, that sounds great!
Note that the SQL specs I think require a purchase.
Thanks,
David
scott hutinger wrote:
I wanted to get the build of the docs finished so everyone can build
what is currently being used. Jeff Levit has some changes he made
that are not incorporated in the dita toolkit. Also, I would like to
get the build up with the current svn number etc. I had one method
of doing this, but think possibly Andrew was thinking of another
method. I also think I had ant do most of it in one version of this.
What I would like to do is get some feedback on the direction that
everyone thinks should be taken.
1) Since the Dita OT has an apache license, some or all of the source
can be put in svn. If we used a Maven build, maven could download
and we could patch with Derby changes to the ot, or we could just
bring the whole code base into svn and make changes this way. I
normally don't think this way, so wasn't sure what the current best
method would be. Any ideas? This could also be done without maven
another way... Is maven the prefered build or is this not an issue
at this point in time?
2) The latest alpha files on the website always have an old build
date. I am uncertain if they don't get built after changes, if they
go through a build daily, or if they don't go through a build at
all. It might also be that a hard coded date is in the dita ot.
Any feedback is very welcome, as DITAOT changed the license quite
some time ago; and this should be used.
I think the main feedback is: how should the DITAOT source be handled
with Jeffs and any other changes that are not within the DITAOT
source base yet?
Also not releated, it might be nice to get some type of external
reference document. I noticed that Army had some external docs on
the wiki on DRDA(from The Open Group) etc.. I think some other good
external docs exist too. I think it would be nice to gather all of
these in a document with a bit of information on the documents
themselves etc... (i.e. to download 'The Open Group' documents for
DRDA, you need to do x/y/z to get them etc...). Myself being one of
those typical developers that get's a lot of help from those external
docs. I think a lot of developers don't really know that much about
SQL standards etc (myself being one), so those external docs are VERY
helpful.
thanks,
scott
