Re: Formats and icing (Was Re: [ESWC 2015] First Call for Paper)

Hi Luca,

I'll admit my opinion is probably skewed by nearly 15 years working in and
around technical documentation environment using structured authoring tools like
FrameMaker and Oxygen based on XML/SGML technologies.

I'm a firm convert from WYSIWIG environments like MS Word to more structured
'semantic' markup made possible with XML... sometimes referred to as WYSIWYM or
"What You See Is What You Mean".
There are some great tools out there that make editing a doddle and allow use of
vector images (SVG) and mathematical formulas (MathML) directly in your XML
document.
As it is XML, then weaving in some RDFa is also possible if you are so inclined

Going to the rendered publication format whether that be page-based (PDF) or
web-based (HTML) or whatever else is possible via a myriad of approach whether
you prefer Latex, HTML+CSS+JS or XSL-FO (for the masochists out there :)
Certainly most technical authors I know would run a mile were you to suggest the
edit directly as Latex or XSL-FO, or even raw XML/HTML for that matter, but
perhaps developers would be more comfortable with it.

DITA on top of this offers the specialization as Colin mentioned, but also a
myriad of different (direct and indirect) referencing possibilities to pull and
push content between different documents.

HTML imports [1] and custom elements [2] might offer some of these options in
HTML at some point in the future.

Cheers,
John

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html-imports/
[2] http://w3c.github.io/webcomponents/spec/custom/


> On October 3, 2014 at 10:59 AM Luca Matteis <lmatteis@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Dear Sarven et al,
>
> I'd like to say that I'm an HTML/CSS/JavaScript aficionado so I'd be
> the first to embrace Web standards to produce publications. I'm simply
> playing a bit of the devil's advocate here because I think that Latex
> is still more mature than HTML for writing papers. However, I must
> admit I'd like to see a future where that is different.
>
> But before we ask conferences to embrace this still immature HTML
> world (at least for producing papers) we must write the frameworks,
> the libraries, the CSS templates that enable the same level of
> publication that Latex enables. JavaScript for example can help with
> the kerning issue (http://kerningjs.com/) and this should be part of
> the "HTML publisher toolkit". For solving the browser inconsistencies,
> standalone tools (based on a Webkit engine for example) must be built
> that produce a consistent printable layout no matter the operating
> system (browser fonts render differently on Mac/Windows/Linux).
>
> So yes, we can get there, but there's some work to be done to prove
> that HTML is up for task. And once we get there, then we can start
> going crazy and adding interactions which is really the power of the
> Web platform.
>
> Phillip Lord, by interactions I don't mean simple animations, I mean
> this: http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/ - use the right side
> scrolling to instantly see the output given different inputs. That's
> powerful stuff.
>
> Best,
> Luca
>
> On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 4:02 PM, Colin Maudry <colin@maudry.com> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Thanks John for the references to my project.
> >
> > It seems that here you need a solution that both pleases those who want a
> > PDF to comply with existing processes, and those who want a machine-readable
> > format for better Web-accessibility.
> >
> > The DITA standard is an OASIS standard, like Open Document. It's an XML
> > framework dedicated to the creation of documents via the assembling of
> > content components, the topics. See it as a Docbook evolved. The Wikipedia
> > page is a good introduction.
> >
> > In the DITA ecosystem, a processing engine has been developed by the
> > community, the DITA Open Toolkit. Through its plugin system, it enables the
> > publication of DITA content to a myriad of output formats:
> >
> > PDF
> > Simple HTML
> > HTML WebHelp (fancy example)
> > ePub and Kindle (through the dita4publisher plugin)
> > ...and RDF/XML through the plugin part of the DITA RDF project. The plugin
> > extracts the metadata of the documentation (author, title, creation date,
> > links, variables), not the meaning of the content (output example). It could
> > be extended to extract certain facts from the content.
> >
> > DITA has a nice feature: its core vocabulary can be extended via
> > "specialization", so that it can support specific purposes: learning
> > content, troubleshooting documents, etc.
> >
> > Those who want a PDF would make a PDF rendition and those who want
> > machine-readable formats would use a flavour of HTML or give me a hand with
> > the RDF output.
> >
> > What do you think?
> >
> > Colin
> >
> > On 02/10/2014 11:08, John Walker wrote:
> >
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I know Latex is the norm in academic circles, but the DITA XML standard is
> > widely used in industry and gaining traction in publishing.
> >
> > Colin Maudry ( @CMaudry) has a project for extracting RDF metadata from DITA
> > content [1].
> > Seems to be attracting interest from Marklogic and HarperCollins [2] and
> > others [3].
> >
> > Cheers,
> > John
> >
> > [1] http://purl.org/dita/ditardf-project
> > [2] http://files.meetup.com/1645603/meetup-2014-08-12.pptx
> > [3]
> > http://de.slideshare.net/TheresaGrotendorst/towards-dynamic-and-smart-content-semantic-technologies-for-adaptive-technical-documentation
> >
> >> On October 2, 2014 at 12:03 AM Norman Gray <norman@astro.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Greetings.
> >>
> >> On 2014 Oct 1, at 22:36, Luca Matteis <lmatteis@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > So forget PDF. Perhaps we can add markup to Latex documents and make
> >> > them linked data friendly? That would be cool. A Latex RDF
> >> > serialization :)
> >>
> >> There exists
> >> <http://www.siegfried-handschuh.net/pub/2007/salt_eswc2007.pdf>:
> >>
> >> > SALT: Semantically Annotated LATEX Tudor Groza Siegfried Handschuh Hak
> >> > Lae Kim
> >> >
> >> > Digital Enterprise Research Institute
> >> > IDA Business Park, Lower Dangan
> >> > Galway, Ireland
> >> > {tudor.groza, siegfried.handschuh, haklae.kim}@deri.org
> >> >
> >> > ABSTRACT
> >> >
> >> > Machine-understandable data constitutes the basis for the Seman- tic
> >> > Desktop. We provide in this paper means to author and annotate Semantic
> >> > Documents on the Desktop. In our approach, the PDF file format is the
> >> > basis
> >> > for semantic documents, which store both a document and the related
> >> > metadata
> >> > in a single file. To achieve this we provide a framework, SALT that
> >> > extends
> >> > the Latex writ- ing environment and supports the creation of metadata for
> >> > scien- tific publications. SALT lets the scientific author create
> >> > metadata
> >> > while putting together the content of a research paper. We discuss some
> >> > of
> >> > the requirements one has to meet when developing such an ontology-based
> >> > writing environment and we describe a usage scenario.
> >>
> >> That describes a very thorough approach to embedding some semantics within
> >> LaTeX documents.
> >>
> >> Yes, 'thorough'; very thorough; verging on the intimidating.
> >>
> >> I dimly recall that there was a rather more lightweight approach which was
> >> used for proceedings in ISWC or ESWC -- I remember marking up a LaTeX
> >> document in something less comprehensive than SALT -- but I can't remember
> >> enough to be able to re-find it.
> >>
> >> All the best,
> >>
> >> Norman
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk
> >> SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>