Revision of Why the acronym tags? from Wed, 2008-11-19 19:12

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Revision of Why the acronym tags? from Wed, 2008-11-19 19:12

Forum topic: Submitted by sorenweimann on Wed, 2008-11-19 19:12. Last updated on Wed, 2008-11-19 19:13.

One thing keeps bugging me about DITA... Why are a lot of tags acronyms and not natural language? Language is a code for people to learn (as we all know). So why put another code (the acronyms) on top of that? It only serves to complicate the accessibility of DITA. It doesn't seem very DITAish to overcomplicate things like that.The corporate world suffers from the Acronym Disease, but I would think that professional communicators like us tech writers, would be clever enough to avoid this kind of exclusion and inaccessibility.I hope that the newly formed DITA Adoption Committee will discuss this issue, as it is especially important for the newcomers to DITA. I know it's a big thing to change to replace the acronyms at this stage, but it will only become harder as more people adopt the standard. Unless there are really good arguments for having acronyms (that I'm not seeing), I strongly suggest that we all start thinking about a way to faze out the acronyms a replace them with natural language. How about making DITA 2.0 - DITA Natura?I just came back from the DITA Europe conference and is planning a DITA pilot for a part of our documentation. I'm really looking forward to diving into DITA, and the conference reassured me that we can pull this off. I want to be able to 'sell' DITA as best as possible to my colleagues, but I have a hard time defending the acronyms. Please help me find a good way to explain it.('You'll get used to it' is not good enough.)Best regards and thanks for a great conference to ComTech and everyone else.

Søren Weimann