Who ya gonna call?

I thought I might see these guys when I was in New York, but not in Colorado!

My family and I were driving home after lunch yesterday and saw a very unique Subaru Outback: it had hoses, beacon lights, dish and Ghostbuster logos everywhere! I found a few pictures on the 'net, and it's exactly what we saw: http://www.myspace.com/coghostbusters.

The guy driving looked a lot like Dan Akroyd, too! I'm still not sure if it is just a fan car, part of a fan film, or if these guys really do try to chase down paranormal activity...

Still, it made me want to listen to Ray Parker, Jr. for some reason... :-)

DocBook v5.0 CR3 already!

Norm Walsh is quick on the turnaround! Please give the latest candidate release of DocBook v5 a test drive and report any issues. You can download the schemas here: http://docbook.org/xml/5.0CR3/. There is also a set of stylesheets released that support v5.0 as well. You can find them here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=21935&package_id=219178

I was a bit of a "problem child" with my RFEs that are now included:

• RFE 1588693: Added an <acknowledgements> element, peer to <dedication>, replacing <ackno> which had only been available at the end of <article>.
• allow <info> in HTML tables.

You can specifically blame me for these. :-) I do think they will be quite useful enhancements.

DocBook SubCommittee for Publishers approved!

I am very pleased to announce the formation of a DocBook SubCommittee for Publishers was approved by the DocBook TC during yesterday's meeting. The charter as approved is a as follows:

OASIS DocBook SubCommittee for Publishers

Background

For more than a decade, DocBook has provided a structured markup vocabulary for hardware and software documentation. DocBook is now widely used in both commercial and Open Source environments. DocBook has a very broad element set, and applies to much more than just technical documentation. The DocBook TC is engaged in evolving the suite of DocBook specifications. The community benefits from having a standard, open, interchangeable vocabulary in which to write structured content. DocBook has been, and will continue to be, designed to satisfy this requirement.

The OASIS DocBook SubCommittee for Publishers is chartered to develop and maintain official variants of DocBook in support of the publishing industry. Specifically, the subcommittee will focus on schema and stylesheet customizations to support: periodicals as regularly published technical notes or journals, book publishing (such as business, legal, medical, and other non-technical domains), educational textbooks and other document types as appropriate for this industry.

Scope of Work

This subcommittee will submit additional enhancements back to the full DocBook standard as appropriate. The scope of this DocBook subcommittee is publishing industry content. Broadly, this includes books, journals and other related publications.

This effort will deliver on the following goals:

• Build official DocBook variants, based against the DocBook v5.0 schemas.
• Address issues and enhancement requests that have arisen from experience with real-world DocBook implementations.
• Add support for features specific to the publishing industry.

If you are a Publisher, and would like to be involved, please let me know! I have a good-size core group of about 8 folks at this point, but would be interested in all the industry expertise we can gather!

DocBook v5.0 CR2 released!

Hot off the press, courtesy of Norm Walsh! Please give the latest candidate release of DocBook v5 a test drive and report any issues. You can download the schemas here: http://docbook.org/xml/5.0CR2/. There is also a set of stylesheets released that support v5.0 as well. You can find them here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=21935&package_id=219178

Finding Love in New York

 

My wife and I celebrated our 11th anniversary in New York City this weekend! We still found love, too! :-)

This was her first time in the Big Apple, so I tried to take her to the top sights in two days: Madison Square Garden, Times Square, Broadway, The Disney Store, Trump Tower, Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum, Ground Zero at WTC, Battery Park, Staten Island and the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center. There's still so much to see, but we did catch "Mary Poppins" and "The Lion King", so I think we did rather well!

Dynamic Publishing with DITA

With DITA's modular, reusable information elements, you can not only publish across different formats and media - but also flexibly recombine information in almost any way you like.

Initial DITA implementations have focused primarily on publishing to pre-defined PDF, HTML and Help formats - basically static publishing with DITA. The real promise of DITA, however, lies in supporting dynamic, personalized content delivery.

At Flatirons Solutions, we've developed a very cool application on top of Mark Logic to enable this dynamic publishing. We've written a whitepaper about it here:
http://www.flatironssolutions.com/Downloads/Whitepaper_DCD_Using_DITA.pdf
This whitepaper defines a new publishing paradigm, which we will call dynamic content delivery. Dynamic delivery changes the rules, putting the reader in charge of what content is important and how it should be packaged. It transforms publishing to an audience of many to publishing to an "audience of one".

What's Inside:

• Static vs. Dynamic Publishing
• DITA: Dynamic Assembly of Topics
• A Scalable Approach to Dynamic Content Delivery
• A Complete DITA Publishing Solution
• Bottom Line Benefits

Rain in New York

Okay, this week, it's actually been snow and biting, cold wind.

The Rain I'm talking about is a great restaurant we went to yesterday. Our VP of Publishing Solutions and resident New York expert, consistently provides us with excellent dining recommendations when we are in the Big City.

Rain was no exception. It's an Asian Fusion restaurant with a great atmosphere, and great food. Website is here: http://rainrestaurant.com[Orange Beef Spicy Fried Rice]

Check it out!

He's also taken us to a great Cuban restaurant (named, "Cuba"), though I don't remember the location...[Mojitos!]

Another great recommendation is Jerry's: http://www.jerrysnyc.com. [Brick Roasted Chicken]

Tonight, I went by myself to the Brooklyn Diner on West 43rd. [Chicken Soup]

My lovely wife is flying in tomorrow, since I have to stay over for meetings next week as well and it's our 11th Anniversary! Can't wait to show her the sites!

DITA 1.1 open for public review!

From the announcement:

The OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC has recently approved the following specification set as a Committee Draft and approved the package for public review:

DITA v1.1

• DITA Version 1.1 Specification Overview
• DITA Architectural Specification v1.1
• DITA Language Specification v1.1
• DTDs
• Schemas

The public review starts today, 5 March 2007, and ends 4 May 2007. This is an open invitation to comment.

...

Comments may be submitted to the TC by any person through the use of the OASIS TC Comment Facility which can be located via the button marked "Send A Comment" at the top of that page, or directly at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/comments/index.php?wg_abbrev=dita.

...

The specification document and related files are available here:

DITA Version 1.1 Specification Overview
http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/overview/overview.html

DITA Architectural Specification v1.1
XHTML: http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/archspec/archspec.html
PDF: http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/archspec/archspec.pdf
DITA: http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/archspec/archspec.zip

DITA Language Specification v1.1
XHTML: http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/langspec/ditaref-type.html
PDF: http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/langspec/ditaref-type.pdf
DITA: http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/langspec/langspec.zip

DTDs
http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/dtd/ditadtd.zip

Schemas
http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/schema/ditaschema.zip