DITA (Darwin Information Type Architecture)

Hot Topics: DITA

2006-03-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

Hot Topics: DITA: "Comtech Services releases DITA User Guide. A Basic User Guide to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture"

Free DITA Pocket Guide from SiberLogic

2006-03-24T09:52:00.000-08:00

Free DITA Pocket Guide: "SiberLogic are offerring a free DITA Pocket Guide"

New DITA web site DITA.XML.org

2006-03-24T09:49:00.000-08:00

DITA XML.org Focus Area - The official community gathering place and information resource for the DITA OASIS Standard.

IBM Task Modeler

2006-02-28T15:29:00.000-08:00

IBM Task Modeler: "Task Modeler is an Eclipse-based software tool for modeling human activity as a hierarchy of tasks and related elements. An information architect can use it to design DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) maps. "

Lionbridge Joins DITA Technical Committee

2006-02-28T15:26:00.000-08:00

Lionbridge Joins DITA Technical Committee: "WALTHAM, Mass., Feb. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Lionbridge Technologies,
Inc., (Nasdaq: LIOX), today announced that it has joined the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) working group as a member of the technical committee."

Subject classification with DITA and SKOS

2006-02-27T10:17:00.000-08:00

Subject classification with DITA and SKOS: "Use a DITA specialization to manage the subject matter of your document content -- that is, identify and process your content based on what each topic is about. With the approach outlined in this article, you can take advantage of the technologies of the Semantic Web for improved search, integration, and other processing. Instead of starting from scratch, however, you can build on standard topic-oriented strategies for authoring and processing content."

Linking DITA Topics Through Relationship Tables

2006-02-23T09:55:00.000-08:00

Linking DITA Topics Through Relationship Tables: "In the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), authors can link within topics to other topics through the element. "

DITA Open Toolkit 1.2 is released!

2006-02-23T09:37:00.000-08:00

SourceForge.net: DITA Open Toolkit 1.2 is released!: "DITA open toolkit Release 1.2 is a major release to add new functions, fulfill new requirements, make some function enhancements and fix bugs over release 1.1.2.1. "

DITA open toolkit Release 1.2 beta

2006-02-07T13:36:00.000-08:00

DITA open toolkit Release 1.2 beta: "DITA open toolkit Release 1.2 beta is the release for testing before the formal release 1.2." Among other things, this release includes transformations for Word RTF, a tool to migrate html to DITA, better error handling (this has been a problem in the past) and several bug fixes.

Success in Standards-Based Content Creation and Delivery at Global Companies

2006-02-03T18:04:00.000-08:00

Success in Standards-Based Content Creation and Delivery at Global Companies
Good white paper by Bill Trippe about DITA and where it's going.

CambridgeDocs Announces xDoc Converter Version 2.0

2006-01-16T09:30:00.000-08:00

CambridgeDocs Announces xDoc Converter Version 2.0: "Provides sample DITA templates for migrating Microsoft Word, FrameMaker, HTML and PDF files to DITA XML"

FrameMaker Publishing Adaptor for the DITA Open Toolkit

2006-01-05T15:22:00.000-08:00

FrameMaker Publishing Adaptor for the DITA Open Toolkit Mekon are developing a publishing adaptor for FrameMaker that will use FrameMakers PDF pagination to format DITA content. This adaptor does not appear to available yet but Mekon say they will release it through the DITA Open Toolkit.

Conditional Text in DITA

2005-11-25T16:35:00.000-08:00

Conditional text allows you to set up a document so that some content can be shown or hidden, or flagged (perhaps with an icon), allowing you to print multiple documents from a single set of content. For example, to produce different flavors of documentation for different operating systems (e.g., Windows, Mac, Unix), for different audiences (Internal, Customer), or for different products or versions of a product.

The purpose of conditions is to allow you to produce multiple documents from a single set of content. To use conditions, you mark your text with an attribute. Then, when you want to print the content you specify which content marked is to be excluded or flagged.

The savings from using conditional text in terms of writing, comparing, and editing can be significant. However, conditions should be used wisely because excessive complexity can be difficult to manage and difficult for writers new to the content to become familiar with.

DITA tries to implement conditional processing in a meaningful way. Instead of using arbitrary in a document, which only have meaning to the original author, DITA has specific attributes that can then be used for filtering, flagging, search, and indexing.

All the select attributes (%select-attr), available on most elements, can be used for conditional processing, for example:

 product     Name of the product being documented
 platform    Platform (e.g., Unix, Windows) on which

             the product is deployed.
 audience    Intended audience of the topic
 rev         Revision or draft number of the current
             document
 importance  Importance or priority of an element.
 otherprops  Anything else

Each attribute takes zero or more space-delimited string values. For example, you can use the product attribute to identify that an element applies to two particular products:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
 <!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN"

      "dtd/topic.dtd">
 <topic id="conditionaltext">
 <title>Conditional Text Example</title>
 <body>
 <p audience=”customer”>Product accessories:
 <ul>
  <li product="product1">accessory1</li>
  <li product="product2 product1">accessory2</li>
 </ul>
 </p>
 </body>
 </topic>

You specify the values you want to exclude and the values you want to flag in a .ditaval file, which contains the processing directives that handle exclusion and flagging. For example, if I want exclude content that applies to product1. My .ditaval file would look like:

<val><prop att="product" val="product1"

 action="exclude" /></val>

At processing time the first list item is excluded (filtered) from the output because it applies to product1 only. The second list item will not be excluded because even though it applies to product1, it also applies to product2, which was not excluded in the .ditaval file. However, we also specified an audience attribute of customer on the enclosing <p> element, which was not excluded in the .ditaval file but the first list item was still excluded.

To understand why this is, it helps to understand the filtering rule, which is: "If any one attribute (product, platform, audience, rev, or otherprops) has all values set to exclude then exclude the element."

In the example, only one value (product1) was specified for the product attribute of the first list item, so it conforms to the filtering rule and is excluded.

To actually process, the conditional text, you must process the DITA files with the /filter parameter, for example:

 java -jar lib\dost.jar /i: source/test.xml

             /outdir:out

             /transtype:xhtml

             /filter:c:/dita/source/myfilter.ditaval

Flagging content

Flagging works in the same way as exclusion, except that if all values of an attribute are set to flag DITA adds an extra flagging element (a text string or an image) to the output, instead of removing the element.

Probably the simplest way to flag would be to output the flagging text in an <em> tag in HTML, with a class setting “flag” that you can use CSS to style as white, in small caps with a purple background. For example,

 <em class=”flag”>ADMIN</em> Set the
          configuration options:
<ul>
<li><em class=”flag”>BP </em>Set foo to bar</li>
<li><em class=”flag”>BP </em><em class=”flag”>EP </em>

Set your link rate</li>
<li>Do some other stuff</li>
<li><em class=”flag”>WINDOWS </em>Do a
       special thing for Windows</li>
</ul>

Migrating Legacy Content to DITA

2005-11-22T16:46:00.000-08:00

One of the perennial problems that arises when moving to DITA is how to convert your existing content. There are many ways to do this but one simple way is to use first convert your content to HTML. Pretty much all commercial applications (MS Word, FrameMaker, etc) support saving as HTML. Once you have your content in HTML you can use a utility like HTML Tidy to convert it to well-formed XML (or XHTML). You can then use a stylesheet to transform this into DITA.

The following article discusses converting HTML to DITA in more detail:

Migrating HTML to DITA, Part 1: Simple steps to move from HTML to DITA

Migrating HTML to DITA, Part 2: Extend the migration for more robust results

DITA support in SiberSafe

2005-11-15T09:02:00.000-08:00

DITA support in SiberSafe SiberLogic has released a DITA Edition of its content management system, SiberSafe. SiberSafe is a feature-rich CMS that also combines semantic knowledge modeling, which allows cotent to be retrieved in many different ways. SiberLogic's modeling technology is built on the open W3C Semantic Web standards RDF (Resource Description Framework) and OWL (Web Ontology Language).

60 Vendors Set to Showcase Latest Innovations at the Gilbane Conference on Content Management Technologies Boston

2005-11-14T10:15:00.000-08:00

60 Vendors Set to Showcase Latest Innovations at the Gilbane Conference on Content Management Technologies Boston: "Information Mapping will introduce Content Mapper, a front-end MS Word-based XML authoring tool that links with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Systems. Information Mapping and Content Mapper are supportive of DITA open source solutions. SiberLogic will showcase SiberSafe DITA, and SiberSafe S1000D: two new editions of its robust, feature-rich XML CMS for documentation teams. "

DITA Lets Tech Publishers 'Eat Their Cake

2005-11-05T09:13:00.000-08:00

DITA Lets Tech Publishers 'Eat Their Cake'Article with interesting references to organizations like Adobe and Autodesk who are using DITA.

Adobe FrameMaker 7.2

2005-11-05T09:08:00.000-08:00

Adobe FrameMaker 7.2 FrameMaker 7.2 now includes a sample structured application for the DITA). Using the new application, you can open standard DITA topic files.

DITA Open Toolkit 1.1.2 is released

2005-11-03T13:35:00.000-08:00

SourceForge.net: DITA Open Toolkit 1.1.2 released: "DITA OT release 1.1.2 available since Oct. 31, 2005. Release 1.1.2 is a maintenance release to fix defects and make patches based on release 1.1.1."

XyEnterprise and Blast Radius Announce Partnership

2005-11-01T11:31:00.000-08:00

XyEnterprise and Blast Radius Announce Partnership: "XyEnterpriseand Blast Radius Inc. have announced a partnership that integrates Blast Radius XMetaL DITA Edition into XyEnterprise's content management system, Content@. Content@ supports both content creation and management using the DITA."

DITA 2006 Conference

2005-10-31T13:46:00.000-08:00

DITA 2006 Conference

CM Pros DITA Community

2005-10-31T13:45:00.000-08:00

CM Pros DITA Community: CM Pros DITA Community will provide a technical resource for members who want to learn XML authoring and editing, specifically using the new DITA XML initiative from OASIS.

Implementing the Darwin Information Typing Architecture for DocBook.

2005-10-31T13:41:00.000-08:00

Implementing the Darwin Information Typing Architecture for DocBook Norman Walsh addresses some of the technical differences between DocBook and DITA.

Adobe Systems Speaks Out on DITA: Internal use of FrameMaker, CMS, and DITA

2005-10-31T13:19:00.000-08:00

Adobe Systems Speaks Out on DITA: Internal use of FrameMaker, CMS, and DITA Puny Sen, Project Lead, Instructional Communications at Adobe Systems talks about Adob's foray into the world of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). Sen shares details about Adobe's recent DITA documentation project, the pro's and con's of using DITA with FrameMaker, as well as lessons learned of importance to anyone interested in adopting the DITA standard.

DITA, technical documents, XML schemas and XML publishing systems

2005-10-25T15:39:00.000-07:00

DITA, technical documents, XML schemas and XML publishing systemsFour part DITA webinar series

DITA Open Toolkit 1.1.1 released

2005-10-10T16:01:00.000-07:00

DITA Open Toolkit 1.1.1 released

DITA Open Toolkit

2005-09-16T11:22:00.000-07:00

The DITA Open Toolkit is an implementation of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee's specification for DITA DTDs and Schemas. The Toolkit transforms DITA content (maps and topics) into deliverable formats.

XMetaL Author DITA Edition

2005-09-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

Test Drive the XMetaL Author DITA Edition: A new version of XMetal that directly supports DITA. There are specific features supporting DITA, which include maps, conditional text, content referencing (reuse), etc

Yahoo! Groups : framemaker-dita

2005-09-16T08:05:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! Groups : framemaker-dita: The FrameMaker-DITA group is a team of developers and reviewers, working together to design a DITA EDD. The goal is to produce a DITA EDD that may be freely distributed and provide other FrameMaker users with a starting point in implementing DITA.

Yahoo! Groups : dita-users

2005-09-16T08:03:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! Groups : dita-users: This group supports users of DITA.

Cover Pages: DITA

2005-09-16T08:01:00.000-07:00

Cover Pages: Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA XML) A very comprehensive list of documentation about the DITA architecture.

OASIS DITA Technical Committee

2005-09-16T07:59:00.000-07:00

OASIS DITA Technical Committee The purpose of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee (TC) is to define and maintain the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and to promote the use of the architecture for creating standard information types and domain-specific markup vocabularies.