http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Information-Design/XML/DITA A listing of the most recently indexed works about Articles and Information Design and XML and DITA in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Information-Design/XML/DITA http://tc.eserver.org/35618.html http://tc.eserver.org/35618.html By reading this short tutorial, you'll get acquainted with the DITA 1.1 markup and after that, you'll be able to author your first DITA document right away. This short tutorial will not discuss the DITA ``philosophy'' or the advantages of the DITA vocabulary over other XML vocabularies (e.g. DocBook). http://tc.eserver.org/35016.html http://tc.eserver.org/35016.html The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) provides maps for assembling topics into deliverables. By specializing the map elements, you can define a formal information architecture for your deliverables. This architecture provides guidance to authors on how to organize topics and lets processes recognize your organizing principles, resulting in a consistent, clear experience for your users. http://tc.eserver.org/34718.html http://tc.eserver.org/34718.html Inline links and citations can be disruptive to the flow of information. Try to delete them because a topic is a discrete unit of information that is meaningful when it is displayed alone. http://tc.eserver.org/34719.html http://tc.eserver.org/34719.html Overview of best practices for using ditamaps and relationship tables to manage linking. http://tc.eserver.org/34720.html http://tc.eserver.org/34720.html While topic relationships can be stored in the topics themselves, as products evolve and user interfaces change, a topic that was required for release 1.0 of a product may no longer be needed in release 2.3. If related topics are maintained at the topic level, removing a topic that is no longer part of the system may involve modifying the related topics of a dozen different DITA files. http://tc.eserver.org/34721.html http://tc.eserver.org/34721.html Because keyref is so important and because it also has inherent, unavoidable complexity, I will be posting short examples of how keyref can be used to solve specific business problems. This is the first in an occasional series of such examples. This example shows one particular application of the keyref feature to a real-world problem faced by one of Really Strategies' clients. http://tc.eserver.org/34361.html http://tc.eserver.org/34361.html This tutorial uses the DITA Open Toolkit 1.4.2.1 and the corresponding PDF plugin release, and Wrycan's demo text. This assumes you have a working DITA environment and can run the default formatting with PDF plugin. http://tc.eserver.org/34261.html http://tc.eserver.org/34261.html Using Adobe FrameMaker 9, one can save a DITA Map in various formats depending on one’s requirements. It could be intermediary output, like – FrameMaker Book/Document; or it can be final output, like – Print/PDF. http://tc.eserver.org/34150.html http://tc.eserver.org/34150.html Since adaptation and reuse are core ideas of DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture), perhaps we'll be forgiven if we adapt and reuse old Beatles standards to explain the newest XML standards (hey, maybe it's the only way to make XML sound catchy). DITA is an IBM gift to the technical documentation community that was approved as a standard this spring by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), the hosts for many XML interchange standards such as ebXML. Ever since, tech writers have been buzzing about an easier way to get into structured topic-based writing with DITA XML and asking XML Editor vendors to add support for DITA. http://tc.eserver.org/33727.html http://tc.eserver.org/33727.html It’s hard to go to a content management or publishing technology conference these days without there being a presentation on DITA — the Darwinian Information Typing Architecture. For the uninitiated, DITA is an XML architecture for authoring and publishing topic-based content, typically technical documentation. The brainchild of IBM, where it is used internally for many documentation projects, DITA is now an open-source standard under the aegis of OASIS. http://tc.eserver.org/33728.html http://tc.eserver.org/33728.html DITA supports the proper construction of specialized DTDs from any higher-level DTD or schema. The base DTD is ditabase DTD, which contains an archetype topic structure and three additional peer topics that are typed specializations from the basic topic: concept, task, and reftopic. The principles of specialization and inheritance resemble the principle of variation in species proposed by Charles Darwin. So the name reminds us of the key extensibility mechanism inherent in the architecture. http://tc.eserver.org/33735.html http://tc.eserver.org/33735.html DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is an XML-based information architecture. DITA doesn’t reinvent the wheel – rather, it sets standards for known structuring requirements. One very attractive aspect of this architecture is its clear alignment to a structuring method that has proved itself for years in online documentation. The basis of this method is the division of the content into modules called TOPICS. Today, this structuring method is considered the ideal approach for the organisation of comprehensive contents. As with everything new, there are many questions about DITA. http://tc.eserver.org/33682.html http://tc.eserver.org/33682.html DITA provides the ability to chunk information, to deliver selected topics in a variety of compilations and output to various formats. It allows the passing back and forth of this content among authors regardless of tools. My hesitation with DITA has only been that it’s too early to adopt. But I believe the turning point has come. http://tc.eserver.org/33683.html http://tc.eserver.org/33683.html As an independent consultant working mainly with small businesses I find that my clients are reluctant to commit to DITA for a number of reasons. As DITA authoring tools become more user-friendly and more readily available some of these barriers will begin to fade. But in general terms, the more DITA tools that become available, and the easier they become to use, the better for everyone. http://tc.eserver.org/33395.html http://tc.eserver.org/33395.html I'm starting to wonder whether the adoption rate of DITA and the DITA Open Toolkit is going to diverge. Widespread adoption of DITA leads to a a sort of herd effect with safety in numbers. Not so for the Open Toolkit. http://tc.eserver.org/32794.html http://tc.eserver.org/32794.html DITA is known for the rigidity of its structure, but technical communicators have opportunities to adapt it to their content through specialization, a term that refers to the customization of DITA structures. http://tc.eserver.org/32797.html http://tc.eserver.org/32797.html Many people see DITA architecture as a shortcut to avoiding content modeling. O'Keefe warns readers against this mistake. http://tc.eserver.org/32365.html http://tc.eserver.org/32365.html DITA provides a powerful means of linking using relationship tables. The benefit of using a relationship table is the ability to create and maintain links in one place with the map rather than in the topics. Links can be created both between topics of the same information type and between topics of different information types that are not directly related through parent/child relationships. Therefore, the best practice for linking in DITA is to use a relationship table within a map. http://tc.eserver.org/32366.html http://tc.eserver.org/32366.html The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) provides a way for documentation authors and architects to create collections of typed topics that can be easily assembled into various delivery contexts. Topic specialization is the process by which authors and architects can define topic types, while maintaining compatibility with existing style sheets, transforms, and processes. The new topic types are defined as an extension, or delta, relative to an existing topic type, thereby reducing the work necessary to define and maintain the new type. http://tc.eserver.org/32367.html http://tc.eserver.org/32367.html The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) has emerged as a standard topic-oriented document architecture. DITA holds many advantages over information authored directly in HTML, including better reuse, easily changed presentation styles, and easy single sourcing. This article, the first of two parts, explains how to get a quick start with DITA using HTML topics that are already available. It shows you how to use the provided XSLT transform to do the migration, and examines what is needed to ensure quality results. http://tc.eserver.org/32091.html http://tc.eserver.org/32091.html A brief overview for a couple of fellow Austin writers who have asked me recently how and where to get started with DITA. http://tc.eserver.org/31752.html http://tc.eserver.org/31752.html You will better understand how DITA can support your organization and how it can scale to meet your enterprise content needs by first understanding the basics of DITA standardization. http://tc.eserver.org/31743.html http://tc.eserver.org/31743.html Want to get involved in the formation of one of the most important XML standards impacting content professionals? You can. And, you should. The folks at OASIS—the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards—have made it easy for just about anyone to participate. http://tc.eserver.org/31357.html http://tc.eserver.org/31357.html Is your company making the move from Information Mapping to DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture)? The author compares and contrasts the two methods and shares insight on how to ease the pain of switching from one to the other. http://tc.eserver.org/31171.html http://tc.eserver.org/31171.html In this podcast, Marlene Martineau of New Dawn Technologies explains why they adopted DITA, how they adopted it, the benefits they're experiencing, and the reasons why she'll never go back. http://tc.eserver.org/31158.html http://tc.eserver.org/31158.html I went to the Content Management Strategies/DITA North America 2008 conference (put on by CIDM), which took place in Santa Clara last week. While I went to support our co-founder's speech on DocBook versus DITA, I also used this opportunity to catch up with software vendors and single-source users. Here's my top #10 take-away list. http://tc.eserver.org/31124.html http://tc.eserver.org/31124.html I have seen a couple of blog postings lately that underscore the statement that DITA is not for everyone or for every situation. http://tc.eserver.org/30231.html http://tc.eserver.org/30231.html Some folks here are taking a very strong look at DITA. I'm certainly one of them. But we also have a huge legacy of documents in Solbook format (Sun's subset of DocBook). There are tools for editing such documents, and tools for processing them. and there are many people who are comfortable with those tools. So DITA isn't going to replace the world, just yet. But DITA makes extensive reuse possible. It's a format with a serious future, because "reuse" is a very big deal. It lets you single-source your information content so have one place to make an edit. That sort of thing becomes important when you have multiple revisions of a product, and/or multiple variations. It becomes important when different tools and different products use the same information in different ways. It can drastically improve quality, ensure uniformity of presentation. Finally, structured formats like DITA and DocBook create the kind of consistently-tagged information that allows for useful automation. http://tc.eserver.org/29461.html http://tc.eserver.org/29461.html Is DITA right for your organization? This article provides a starting point for your own research on DITA. http://tc.eserver.org/29399.html http://tc.eserver.org/29399.html DITA is quickly becoming the dominant XML schema for topic-oriented authoring. DITA is a highly practical way of moving to XML authoring in general and granular content reuse in particular. DITA distinguishes itself from predecessor standards by explicitly rejecting the book paradigm in favour of a topic-oriented model. http://tc.eserver.org/29402.html http://tc.eserver.org/29402.html This article explores ideas related to subsetting and customizing the DITA specification without the addition of new elements. Instead, we explore taking default rules and adapting them to meet the needs of specific writing and publishing environments. Introductory information about the DITA specification and the difference between subsetting and specialization is provided. http://tc.eserver.org/27916.html http://tc.eserver.org/27916.html The abbreviation DITA stands for 'Darwin Information Typing Architecture', an information architecture based on XML. DITA is not a mere reinvention of the wheel: rather, it sets the standards for known structuring requirements. The most striking feature of this architecture is the clear orientation towards a technology for structuring, which has already proved its worth in online documentation. http://tc.eserver.org/27374.html http://tc.eserver.org/27374.html Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. The architecture and a related DTD and a W3C-Schema was developed by IBM. http://tc.eserver.org/27077.html http://tc.eserver.org/27077.html DITA experts Don Day, Michael Priestley, and Gretchen Hargis address the topic architecture of DITA, tips and techniques, and general DITA questions. http://tc.eserver.org/27078.html http://tc.eserver.org/27078.html A primary factor behind the enormous interest in XML is the support it provides for transforming documents to meet the needs of information-processing applications as well as human readers working with HTML, print, and other presentation media. This case study reviews the issues we confronted, the tools we implemented, and the procedures we adopted to transform a documentation set from one XML document type to another, and from XML to HTML and Adobe PDF. The documentation set for Xalan, the Apache XSL transformer based largely on code donated by Lotus/IBM, is written in XML, using document types shared by the projects on the Apache XML website. To present Xalan reference releases to IBM project groups, the Cambridge Advanced Technology Group has set up build procedures to transform the Xalan XML documentation to DITA, an extensible XML information typing architecture currently under development in IBM. After verifying that the DITA output conforms to its declared document type, the build publishes the DITA documentation set as HTML and as PDF. http://tc.eserver.org/27001.html http://tc.eserver.org/27001.html DITA is an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It is also an architecture for creating new information types and describing new information domains based on existing types and domains. This allows groups to create very specific, targeted document type definitions using a process called specialization, while still sharing common output transforms and design rules developed for more general types and domains. http://tc.eserver.org/27000.html http://tc.eserver.org/27000.html The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. This architecture consists of a set of design principles for creating 'information-typed' modules at a topic level and for using that content in delivery modes such as online help and product support portals on the Web. This document is a roadmap for DITA: what it is and how it applies to technical documentation.