Authoring: March 2006 Archives

Sarah O'Keefe from Scriptorium noted and commented on a great discussion of DITA and DocBook by Norm Walsh, the guru of DocBook. Norm was a featured speaker at last week's DITA 2006 conference. Norm's discussion is readable and lucid, and if you have been wondering about this question for a while, Norm's post is required reading.

Via Scott Abel, we learned about the formation of the OpenDocument Format Alliance. I went straight to the "about" page, which provides the current list of members. The right concentration of UnMicrosoft vendors are there--Sun, Novell, IBM, Corel, and RedHat. But there are a few interesting members, including the American Library Association and the Massachusetts High Technology Council (and yes, if you go to their Web page, that is indeed the unlikely romantic pairing of Ted Kennedy and Mitt Romney chuckling in the picture on the upper left). The Mass High Tech Council caught my eye because they are a famously pro-growth organization that might not always get behind this kind of initiative. Perhaps they have suddenly realized that standards are good for growth? Or perhaps there are enough Massachusetts High Tech companies with an interest in ODF? Novell's headquarters is in Massachusetts now, but they are not a member of the Council. But Sun has a big campus here, and they are a member. So that might explain it.

Scott's article has a good roundup of related news coverage.