DITA Specialization: Tools for Visual Support

Experts in Information Management Solutions and Services
DITA Specialization: Tools for Visual SupportJune, 2010

Webinar overview
Goals:
Demonstrate how typical difficulties in doing DITA Specialization can be overcome by using visual tooling
Concentrate on basic tasks related to DITA Specialization
Audience:
People having basic knowledge about possibilities of DITA Specialization and willing to try it
People experienced with traditional ways of doing DITA Specialization willing to make this process more efficient
Understanding of DITA specialization principles is expected
Questions:
Questions can be asked using webex chat. They will be gathered and answered at the end of webinar.
2

Agenda
Traditional approach of doing Specializations
Main challenges
Traditional vs. Visual Specialization
Example / Demo
Q&A
3

Traditional approach of doing DITA specializations
4

Traditional way: Bottom-up approach
Standard
DITA
Text filescontaining:
Definitionsofnewstructuralelements
Definitionsofattributes
Text filescontaining:
Definitionsofnewdomainelements
Shell DTD1
Structural module 1
Structural module 3
Structural module 2
Domain module 1
…
5

Traditional way: Bottom-up approachII
Specialized
Model
Shell DTD A
Structural module A
Domain module A
Standard
DITA
Structural module 1
Structural module 3
Shell DTD1
Structural module 2
Domain module 1
Domain module 2
…
Shell DTD2
6

Main challenges people face when doing DITA Specializations
7

Challenge 1:
Understanding possibilities and limitations of DITA Specialization
Problem:
People often do not understand main rules of DITA specialization and related implications
Possible solution:
Initial education about possibilities and limitations of DITA Specialization
8

Challenge 2:
Difficulties with initial setup of specialization infrastructure
Problems:
Making changes in source files of original DITA model
Problems in setup of proper “empty” Shell DTD infrastructure
Making errors in integration process (wrong sequence of component integration, missing some declarations etc.)
Possible solution:
Simplify this process by having a wizard-like process for guiding the users
Automated DTD creation in the background
9

Challenge 3:
Errors in specialization process
Problems:
Insufficient overview of available elements and resulting XML structure
Violating rules of DITA specialization*. Some examples:
Uniqueness of element names: Usage of same infotype or element names as in base DITA models
Structural elements without parent
Wrong element content model
Mixing domain and structural elements (DITA 1.1 specific)
Possible solution:
Provide sufficient overview: model elements, changes etc.
Automatic validation of specialization rules
Disable operations that will lead to invalid model
10
* see: http://support.ditaworks.com/problems_and_solutions/errors-in-dita-specializations-modeling/

Challenge 4:
Integrating specialization into authoring environment
Problems:
Not all DITA-aware tools support specialized models out-of-the-box
Possible solution:
Use tools that are able to integrate specializations out-of-the box
Useintegrated tooling: no need for additional integration
11

Traditional vs. Visual
12

Visual way: Top-down or Bottom-up?
Visual
tooling
Internal representation:
Definitionsofnewstructuralelements
Visual Infotype editor
Shell DTD1
Visual editors for modules and domains
Structural module 1
Structural module 3
Domain module 1
Structural module 2
…
Internal representation:
Definitionsofnewdomainelements
13

Visual way: Top-down presentation
Advantages:
Resulting XML structure is presented in tree-like way (kind of WYSIWYG)
Most specialization functions are accessible from this presentationvia context menu
Changes made on current level of specialization are marked using color codes and icons:
Blue – changed/specialized element
Bold – changed cardinality
Red cross icon – removed elements
14

Example
15

Example overview: Earthquake notification message
Goals:
Create a sample DITA model based on one of the existing public models
Task definition:
Define a DITA topic describing earthquake notification with following fields:
Message Identifier
Message Main Text
Earthquake location
Earthquake Intensity level
Actions taken
Responses for operators for different cases (2 different cases for simplicity)
Way to define references to other earthquake messages
Tool:
DITAworks DITA Visual Specialization Manager (DVSM)
16

Example: Steps involved
Step 1: Plan your specialization
Step 2: Create main infrastructure components
Step 3: Perform structural specialization
Test results
Step 4: Perform domain specialization
Test results
Step 5: Consume model or Export
17

DITAworks: specific terminology..
Standard DITA
DITAworks
Infotype
Shell DTD
Domain module
Domain module
Structural module
Structural module
18

Example: Tooling overview
Main UI elements of DITAworks DVSM:
Modeling perspective
Modeling views:
Project explorer
Modules view
Domains view
Main visual editors:
Infotype editor
Structural Module editor
Domain editor
19

Step 1: Plan your specialization I
1.1 Decide about required infotypes:
In our case, we will create 1 new infotype for Earthquake message: eqMessage
1.2 Write down main elements that will be your new infotypes:
20

Step 1: Plan your specialization II
1.3 Browse existing models and find good candidates for parent types to specialize from:
In our case, as a parent infotype, we will use msgref from Message Reference DITA model
1.4 Inside of parent type, find elements that you will specialize from. Map your elements to parent elements. Check their content models.
21

Step 2: Creating infrastructure components
Creating new DITA model:
Create new Model project using “New/Model project”
Use Message Reference model as the parent or dependent model
Choose model public Id
Creating new Infotype:
Create new Infotype “eqMessage” using “New/Infotype”
Provide publicId
Create new structural module “eqMessage.stdmodule”
Choose required domains
22

Step 3: Doing structural specialization
Define new elements based on parent elements:
Specialize elements using tree presentation
Alternatively, specialize elements using Structural module editor
Edit content model of elements using visual actions or DTD expressions
Test your infotype:
Use “Create XML” action for that
23

Step 4: Doing domain specialization
Create new domain:
Create new domain using “New/DITA Domain module”
Define new domain elements:
Using domain editor, define new elements based on existing DITA elements
Integrate new domain into infotype:
Use “Modules” tab in Infotype Editor for this
Test your infotype:
Use “Create XML” action for that
24

Step 5: Consume model or Export
Use new model inside of DITAworks:
Create a content project based on the model
Use new infotype from “New topic” wizard
Export model:
As DTD
As DITA Open toolkit plugin
As XML Schema (optional)
25

Q & A Session
26

New Ideas in Information Management
Sophienstr. 17
D-70178 Stuttgart
phone: +49 (0) 711 - 99 33 85 90
fax: +49 (0) 711 - 99 33 85 99
e-mail: info@instinctools.com
internet: www.instinctools.com
27

DITAworks Integrated toolset Core Areas
Authoring
Process
Publishing & Export
Modeling
Provides meta information for all DITAworks tooling and enables efficient use of specialization.
Import of existing specializations from DTD and XML Schema
Export of managed specializations to DTD and XML Schema
Visual editors for DITA base model: Specialization editing
Model validations
Extended model:
Settings for editorial tools
WYSIWYG Style sheets
Custom validation rules
Custom transformations
etc.
Provides a set of integrated editorial model-driven tools for efficient content authoring.
Content Import
Infrastructural project rules
Visual editors for DITA topics and maps
Link management
Content validation
Content refactoring (e.g. rename, move, content extraction etc.)
Reuse block management
Tag management
Versioning
Collaboration
Provides means for delivery to end-user based on improved and enhanced OT.
Integrated OT with some important improvements.
Publishing configurations including settings for variables, conditional processing etc.
Extended support of Eclipse help
Export of content (full or partial)
Publishing server for running headless transformations.
28

DITAworks Model-driven Architecture
29

DITA Specialization: Tools for Visual Support

by instinctools GmbH on Jun 11, 2010

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 2

Statistics

DITA Specialization: Tools for Visual Support — Presentation Transcript