Re: Documentation Desparation

[Thomas Beale <thomas.beale@oceaninformatics.com>]

Unfortunately I can't make any conversion mission a top priority, but let's commit at least to an experiment which I can initiate - I will generate the 'standard as-is' XML output from one specification (say the data types) and make that available - Seref or someone else may be able to determine what rules it is following; in the meantime I can do a bit of research on what needs to be done to a FM document to make its XML output DITA based.

- thomas


Tim Cook wrote:

Hi Seref,

Thanks for your concerns and well thought out points.

If you read my original posting, I didn't ask Tom to stop using
Framemaker.  I ask for some output in place of (or in addition to) the
PDF and Framemaker formats.  I'll happily accept .doc files at this
point.

It seems that we have a different perspective on what the sense of trust
in the community is also.  But that is an entirely other subject.  :-)

--Tim


On Fri, 2009-09-25 at 11:08 +0100, Seref Arikan wrote:
  

Dear all, 
I'd like to express my concerns about practical outcomes of suggested
changes, changes based on potential benefits. I'd appreciate your
input about the use cases we are discussing just to make sure that I
get this right. 
First of all, translation of openEHR documentation to other languages
is a very critical task, which would be quite a challenge, because we
are talking about very high quality documentation, to which I keep
going back quite often, mostly to find out that a point that I was
missing has already been there, expressed carefully. At one point I've
thought about translating the docs to Turkish, my mother tongue, and
realized that not having a Framemaker licence was the least of my
problems. Reflecting the same quality, and more important than that,
the same semantics consistenty in other languages is a huge challange.
It requires understanding of the domain, the standard, and possesion
of more than ordinary control over two languages, one being English.
Also, as a member of openEHR community I would not like to see
translations of the specs in the wild, with no official approval or
inclusion from openEHR foundation, since this can easily lead to
confusing documentation on an already confusing topic, which is
challanging enough to master with really good docs. 
I would like to know if there are efforts, or even intentions of
translating this documentation to other languages, and the owners of
these intentions. How many translations of the documentation will be
for Spanish for example? If a person would give this task a try, due
to reasons expressed above, he/she would have to possess quite a lot
of time, skills  and he/she would have to communicate with openEHR to
make sure that the outcomes do not do harm instead of doing good. My
opinion is, this would be an effort linked to an institutuion like a
university, or a government agency, working with openEHR. I can't see
people working in their homes/offices on their own, doing this whole
work, and if there are people like this, I really want to know them.
The point? Well, the translation would mostly likely be performed by
people with resources. A framemaker 9 licence would be the least of
their problems. Again, please let us know if there is a person out
there, comminting to translation, committing to ensure its quality,
and committing to its maintanance, and is not able to move forward,
just because he/she can't afford a licence for Framemaker. 
I appreciate the effort for preserving the idea of openness in all
aspects of openEHR, but I want to see Tom producing documentation
efficiently. This is his time spend in front of a computer, and I do
not want him working slower, or producing inferior quality output,
which is what will obviously happen if he does not use Framemaker. I
have to confess that I am failing to see the fairness of asking Tom to
commit more of his time today, for potential future benefits, which
have significant prerequisites that must be covered, before they can
be realized.
Having used Framemaker html, xml outputs to produce documentation for
Eclipse plugins, I'm fine with the idea of documentation being
exported to these formats from framemaker. PDF outputs are simply read
only docs, doing exactly what they are created for, providing cross
platform access to documentation. So I don't see the point of
critisizing them for not being appropriate for translation either,
since they are not produced to be edited at all. 
Conclusion: please let us see concrete use cases,that justifies making
the suggested changes, build on not only on idealism but also actual
cost benefit analysis, and we can build a solution, or a roadmap from
there. I'd rather see this wonderful community move forward, trying to
stay close to its principles as much as it can, with its available
resources, than see it watch others progress while we fail to do so
just because we're getting ready for a better future all the time. 

Best Regards
Seref


On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 9:18 AM, Tim Cook
<timothywayne.cook@gmail.com> wrote:
        On Fri, 2009-09-25 at 10:08 +0200, Erik Sundvall wrote:
        
        > In a previous license discussion I suggested the much more
        commonly
        > understood and more open CC-BY licence
        > (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) to be used for
        the
        > specification documents, but I believe the discussion then
        slipped
        > over to just licensing for archetypes. Can we solve this
        while we are
        > at it?
        
        
        Well, I'm still waiting to hear from the openEHR Foundation
        Board
        (officially) on this issue since they are the only governing
        body we
        have.
        
        I'm not personally concerned with the notice you pointed out
        because my
        re-use strictly adheres to items 2&3.  However, commercial
        users/developers such as Ocean Informatics may or may not be
        in breach
        of that license.  That is for the Foundation Board to decide.
         There
        does seem to be some conflict with some of the content notices
        and
        licenses regarding commercial use though.  It basically
        depends on where
        you look on the website.
        
        The openEHR Foundation, as a legal entity in the UK (and the
        web site
        claims globally), supported by CHIME/UCL and Ocean Informatics
        I assume
        have sought proper legal counsel?
        
        --Tim
        
        
        
        _______________________________________________
        openEHR-clinical mailing list
        openEHR-clinical@openehr.org
        http://lists.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-clinical

    

_______________________________________________
openEHR-implementers mailing list
openEHR-implementers@openehr.org
http://lists.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-implementers

--

Thomas Beale Chief Technology Officer, Ocean Informatics Chair Architectural Review Board, openEHR Foundation Honorary Research Fellow, University College London Chartered IT Professional Fellow, BCS, British Computer Society