Archive - Feb 2006

Date

Topic-based authoring

Topic-based authoring has been a mainstay of technical information development since we first began developing help systems. We learned quickly enough that we couldn't split our existing books into help topics by making every heading level a new help page. Information originally designed with a narrative flow no longer made sense nor assisted users in finding exactly the content they needed. We had to rethink the type of information that our help systems should include and create a new set of standards for its development. The result is topic-based authoring.

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Test: OASIS Security Services Technical Committee

Announcements:

29-Sep-2005: The individual SAML V2.0 schema files are now available from persistent URLs of the form " http://docs.oasis-open.org/security/saml/v2.0/...". They are all linked from the SAML V2.0 and Post-V2.0 Information section below.

16-Aug-2005: The Liberty Alliance ran a SAML V2.0 interoperability testing session, which was successfully completed by eight companies.

Overview:

SAML, developed by the Security Services Technical Committee of OASIS, is an XML-based framework for communicating user authentication, entitlement, and attribute information. As its name suggests, SAML allows business entities to make assertions regarding the identity, attributes, and entitlements of a subject (an entity that is often a human user) to other entities, such as a partner company or another enterprise application.

For more information, see the TC Charter and FAQ

Subcommittees:
The SSTC has a SAML Adoption Subcommittee. Technical Work Produced by the Committee:
External Resources:

Although not produced by the SSTC, the following information offers useful insights into its work:

Namespaces when Specializing

To make it easier for information architects who are creating specializations, it helps to have guidelines for specializers.

This guideline speaks in favor of creating a distinctive namespace for the new identifiers in a specialized module. It explains how to do so, and some of the consequences.

The content is based on an e-mail message from Eliot Kimber on February 8, 2006 to the mailing list of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee. Note: this was written quickly, for a language design discussion. Suggestion: edit for a less conversational style.

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Guidelines for Specializers

These guidelines are primarily for information architects who are considering adding to the pool of DITA Specializations. Please add your own suggestions, marking with "Suggestion:" any contributions that you believe the community might need to come to consensus on.

Several categories of information are relevant:

  • What a specializer needs to know about modules in DITA
  • Where existing modules are catalogued

Some special topics are also provided:

 

XML.org Focus Areas: BPEL | DITA | ebXML | IDtrust | OpenDocument | SAML | UBL | UDDI
OASIS sites: OASIS | Cover Pages | XML.org | AMQP | CGM Open | eGov | Emergency | IDtrust | LegalXML | Open CSA | OSLC | WS-I