The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. DITA divides content into small, self-contained topics that can be reused in different deliverables. The extensibility of DITA permits organizations to define specific information structures and still use standard tools to work with them. DITA is often compared against DocBook, a similar XML schema.
#35041
DocBook to DITA Conversion Automation - Improving the Yield?
With DITA implementations on the rise, and an entrenched DocBook community already in place, the resulting market interest has spurred interest in automated DocBook to DITA conversion. So I would expect offerings of automated DocBook to DITA conversion scripts to emerge in the next 6-10 months. This article addresses the real questions, "What should I expect from automated tools?" and "Will they work for me?" from the viewpoint of live experience with numerous DocBook to DITA conversions. The answers to these questions are not usually obvious.
Vaysbukh, Mikhail. DCL (2008). Articles>Documentation>DocBook>DITA
#35042
Painless XML Authoring?: How DITA Simplifies XML
Structured writing requires an analysis of content and a reorganization into the smallest possible coherent topics.
Doyle, Bob. SlideShare (2007). Presentations>Content Management>XML>DITA
#35043
Ten DITA Lessons Learned from Tech Writers in the Trenches
This top ten list is based on interviews conducted by TheContentWrangler.com with technical writers at more than 20 software companies—tech writers that are actually using DITA to create documentation today.
Content Wrangler, The (2006). Articles>Documentation>XML>DITA
#35044
DITA For Business Documents? New OASIS Committee Says "Yes!"
Think DITA is just for procedural technical documents? Think again. A new OASIS DITA sub-committee has been announced whose purpose it is to explore using the popular technical documentation standard known as the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) outside technical documentation projects.
Content Wrangler, The (2007). Articles>Business Communication>XML>DITA
#35045
The DITA Open Platform is a free, open-source project which goal is to provide an enterprise platform for the edition, management and processing of DITA documents.
#35046
Easy Command Line Processing with the DITA Open Toolkit
The DITA Open Toolkit can transform your DITA files into a wide variety of output types. When you first install it, it's easy to get the impression that you need to know Ant well to use it, but you can pack most of its available options into a single Java™ command line.
DuCharme, Bob. IBM (2008). Articles>Content Management>XML>DITA
#35081
Creating PDF files from DITA Content 
The DITA OpenToolkit (DITA OT) provides a way to produce multiple outputs, including Portable Document Format (PDF) files; however, the technology for creating PDF files is limited, and modifying the formatting is challenging. This paper explains the alternatives and trade-offs for each method and helps demystify the decision process.
Loring, Sheila and David James Kelly. Scriptorium (2009). Articles>Information Design>DITA>Adobe Acrobat
#35225
Use Cases for User Assistance Writers
Perhaps the true measure of a good idea is its persistence, even though folks are slow to pick up on it. SGML is a good example. It seemed like a great idea, but for a long time, had trouble getting traction in the general tool space. Then it started showing up at technical communication conferences wearing a name badge that said, “Hi, my name is DITA,” and suddenly, it’s a hit!
Hughes, Michael A. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Documentation>XML>DITA
#35371
DITA 1.2 Feature Description: Glossary and Terminology Specialization
In technical writing, synonyms and variants should be used judiciously and often avoided altogether. The use of one term consistently to express a given concept is preferred so that communication is clear and so that translation costs are minimized. For this reason, when synonyms and variants do exist in popular usage, it is common practice in commercial environments to choose one of the terms as the “preferred term.” This indicator of preferred usage needs to be documented in glossaries. Due to the limitations of markup languages for creating glossaries, usually the so-called preferred term is identified simply by making it the headword in a glossary entry and providing a definition in this glossary entry.
Warburton, Kara. OASIS (2009). Articles>Information Design>Standards>DITA
#35375
There are at least two broad categories of technology that managers often confuse. The first is technology that replaces a particular skill. For example, the cash register at a McDonalds has technology that relieves cashiers from doing math, so they can hire people who are not skilled in math. The second is technology that allows a skilled practitioner to be more productive. For example, the computer makes it possible to write and edit text much more easily than a typewriter, but it won’t make a bad writer better.
Hamilton, Richard. Managing Writers (2009). Articles>Management>Technical Writing>DITA
#35431
Concept, Task, Reference: A Practical Guide to Choosing the Right Topic Type
This presentation is for beginning to intermediate users of DITA. It's based on my experience with projects on which I'm project manager, information architect, and writer.
Kunz, Lawrence D. SDI Global Solutions (2009). Presentations>Information Design>XML>DITA
#35432
How DITA Changed the Tech Comm Landscape
Before DITA, we told readers how things worked. After DITA, we tell users how to use things. Before, we wrote information linearly. After, we write individual units as needed.
SDI Global Solutions (2009). Presentations>TC>XML>DITA
#35433
DITA is useful for helping writers create small units of organized information that can be used in multiple contexts. Of course, the reader's problem then becomes locating the information they want in a quick, reasonable timeframe. Although DITA provides enough metadata to simplify searching, or even to present information the reader needs based on a profile, there are some media that cannot make use of those facilities. To bridge that gap, you can use the tried and true index.
Vazquez, Julio J. SDI Global Solutions (2009). Articles>Information Design>Indexing>DITA
#35435
What does structured authoring mean to you? Structured authoring is a publishing workflow that lets you define and enforce consistent organization of information in documents, whether printed or online. What it means to me: defining a goal and assembling architected topics to help the reader achieve that goal.
Vazquez, Julio J. SDI Global Solutions (2009). Presentations>Documentation>Information Design>DITA
#35618
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).
Shafie, Hussein. XMLmind (2009). Articles>Information Design>XML>DITA
#35619
XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) allows to convert the most complex DITA 1.1 documents to production-quality XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.1, JavaTM Help, HTML Help, Eclipse Help, PDF, PostScript®, RTF (can be opened in Word 2000+), WordprocessingML (can be opened in Word 2003+), Office Open XML (.docx, can be opened in Word 2007+), OpenOffice (.odt, can be opened in OpenOffice.org 2+).
XMLmind (2009). Resources>Software>DITA>Open Source
