DITA 101

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DITA 101 Sarah O’Keefe (@sarahokeefe) Scriptorium Publishing (@Scriptorium)

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Sarah O’Keefe @sarahokeefe ❖ Founder and president, Scriptorium Publishing, www.scriptorium.com ❖ Based in North Carolina ❖ Content strategy for tech comm ❖ Interested in collision of content, publishing, and technology

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Before we begin… ❖ Everyone is muted except for the presenter ❖ Please ask your questions through the Questions area in the webcast interface ❖ The presentation is being recorded; attendees do not appear in the recording ❖ #dita101 hashtag for Twitter

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Agenda ❖ What is DITA? ❖ Key DITA concepts ❖ Typical scenarios for DITA ❖ Is DITA right for you?

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What is DITA? ❖ Darwin Information Typing Architecture ❖ Darwin – because you can evolve new elements from existing elements ❖ Information Typing – content is categorized as task, reference, concept ❖ Architecture – includes components for reuse, single sourcing, and generating output ❖ Developed by IBM, maintained by OASIS

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Why is DITA important? Is DITA important? ❖ Structured authoring is creating content with programmatic enforcement of the required structure ❖ DITA is a speciﬁc way to do structured authoring ❖ Many software vendors support DITA

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What is DITA, really? ❖ XML standard ❖ Built for topic-oriented authoring ❖ A way to work in XML without having to design your own structure? ❖ A major buzzword in tech comm ❖ Cost-effective way to create, publish, reuse, and exchange structured content

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DITA components ❖ Document type deﬁnitions (DTDs, which deﬁne structure) ❖ Open Toolkit for generating output ❖ HTML, Eclipse help, CHM, and others through XSL ❖ PDF through XSL-FO ❖ Documentation

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DITA publishing

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What DITA is not ﬂickr: JoelK75

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ﬂickr: bandita

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Perhaps it’s this… ﬂickr: erix!

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ﬂickr: matthewreid Is DITA better than XML?

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Which is better? ﬂickr: eliduke, mdpettitt

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Context matters. ﬂickr: NeilsPhotography

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ﬂickr: liamq

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DITA’s ideal habitat ❖ Topic-oriented, modular content ❖ Content reuse ❖ Content exchange ❖ Translation/localization workﬂow

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Most common business case for DITA? ❖ Localization cost savings ❖ Reuse

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DITA’s challenges ❖ Automated formatting versus hand-crafted pagination ❖ Narrative content ❖ High level of technical expertise required ❖ New skills for authors

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DITA topic (simpliﬁed) <topicid=”seuss”> <title>One tag, two tag</title> <body> Red tag, blue tag Black tag, blue tag, old tag, new tag This one has a little car This one has a little star <note>Say, what a lot of tags there are!</note> </body> </topic>

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<?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE topicPUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd"> <topic id="aardvark" audience="internal"> <title>Aardvark</title> <body> Aardvarks eat mostly termites. Do not accept the aardvarks' offer to help deal with your termite problem. You will not like the results. <note type="danger" id="nofeeding">Do not feed animals snacks, scraps, or people food.</note> </body> </topic>

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<?xml version="1.0"?> I am XML. <!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd"> <topic id="aardvark" audience="internal"> <title>Aardvark</title> <body> Aardvarks eat mostly termites. Do not accept the aardvarks' offer to help deal with your termite problem. You will not like the results. <note type="danger" id="nofeeding">Do not feed animals snacks, scraps, or people food.</note> </body> </topic>

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<?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE topicPUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd"> I am a DITA topic. <topic id="aardvark" audience="internal"> <title>Aardvark</title> <body> Aardvarks eat mostly termites. Do not accept the aardvarks' offer to help deal with your termite problem. You will not like the results. <note type="danger" id="nofeeding">Do not feed animals snacks, scraps, or people food.</note> </body> </topic>

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WYSIOO What You See Is…One Option

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Key DITA concepts ❖ Topics ❖ Map ﬁles ❖ Content references (conrefs) ❖ Specialization

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Topics ﬂickr: scientiﬁcquilter

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Map ﬁles ﬂickr: acnatta

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<?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE mapPUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Map//EN" "map.dtd"> <map rev="1" title="Zoo Policies" xml:lang="en-us"> <topicmeta> <author>Sarah</author> <critdates> <created date="2006/10/31"/> <revised modified="2012/05/31"/> </critdates> </topicmeta> <topicref href="Animal_nutrition.xml" navtitle="Animal nutrition" type="reference"> <topicref href="Aardvark.xml" navtitle="Aardvark" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Baboon.xml" navtitle="Baboon" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Crane.xml" navtitle="Crane" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Dingo.xml" navtitle="Dingo" type="topic"/> </topicref> <topicref href="Visitor_behavior.xml" navtitle="Visitor behavior" type="topic"> <topicref href="Adults.xml" navtitle="Adults" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Children.xml" navtitle="Children" type="topic"/> </topicref> </map>

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<?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE mapPUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Map//EN" "map.dtd"> <map rev="1" title="Zoo Policies" xml:lang="en-us"> <topicmeta> <author>Sarah</author> <critdates> <created date="2006/10/31"/> <revised modified="2012/05/31"/> I am a DITA map. </critdates> </topicmeta> <topicref href="Animal_nutrition.xml" navtitle="Animal nutrition" type="reference"> <topicref href="Aardvark.xml" navtitle="Aardvark" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Baboon.xml" navtitle="Baboon" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Crane.xml" navtitle="Crane" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Dingo.xml" navtitle="Dingo" type="topic"/> </topicref> <topicref href="Visitor_behavior.xml" navtitle="Visitor behavior" type="topic"> <topicref href="Adults.xml" navtitle="Adults" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Children.xml" navtitle="Children" type="topic"/> </topicref> </map>

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<?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE mapPUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Map//EN" "map.dtd"> <map rev="1" title="Zoo Policies" xml:lang="en-us"> <topicmeta> <author>Sarah</author> <critdates> <created date="2006/10/31"/> <revised modified="2012/05/31"/> </critdates> </topicmeta> Level 1 <topicref href="Animal_nutrition.xml" navtitle="Animal nutrition" type="reference"> <topicref href="Aardvark.xml" navtitle="Aardvark" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Baboon.xml" navtitle="Baboon" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Crane.xml" navtitle="Crane" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Dingo.xml" navtitle="Dingo" type="topic"/> </topicref> <topicref href="Visitor_behavior.xml" navtitle="Visitor behavior" type="topic"> <topicref href="Adults.xml" navtitle="Adults" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Children.xml" navtitle="Children" type="topic"/> </topicref> </map>

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<?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE mapPUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Map//EN" "map.dtd"> <map rev="1" title="Zoo Policies" xml:lang="en-us"> <topicmeta> <author>Sarah</author> <critdates> <created date="2006/10/31"/> <revised modified="2012/05/31"/> </critdates> </topicmeta> Level 1 <topicref href="Animal_nutrition.xml" navtitle="Animal nutrition" type="reference"> Level 2 <topicref href="Aardvark.xml" navtitle="Aardvark" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Baboon.xml" navtitle="Baboon" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Crane.xml" navtitle="Crane" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Dingo.xml" navtitle="Dingo" type="topic"/> </topicref> <topicref href="Visitor_behavior.xml" navtitle="Visitor behavior" type="topic"> <topicref href="Adults.xml" navtitle="Adults" type="topic"/> <topicref href="Children.xml" navtitle="Children" type="topic"/> </topicref> </map>

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Named destination inAardvark.xml conrefs <topic id="aardvark"> ... <note type="danger" id="nofeeding">Do not feed animals snacks, scraps, or people food. … </topic> Link in Baboon.xml <topic id="baboon"> <title>Baboon</title> <body> Baboons eat mostly fruit. <note conref="Aardvark.xml#aardvark/nofeeding"/> </body> </topic>

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Specialization ❖ Lets you create additional elements without breaking DITA Open Toolkit processing. ❖ New element is a specialization of the base element. ❖ This is what put the D in DITA.

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Customization options ﬂickr: munksynz

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Customization

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Constraints

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Specialization

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Business case for XML ❖ Content exchange ❖ Database publishing ❖ Reuse content/reduce duplication ❖ Automated formatting/publishing ❖ Compliance

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Beyond XML’s business case, DITA may… ❖ Reduce content modeling effort ❖ Make content truly portable ❖ Support content reuse ❖ Take advantage of software support ❖ Provide output options ❖ Reduce overall cost of implementation

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Reduce content modeling effort

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Make content truly portable ﬂickr: aloha75

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Support content reuse ❖ Map ﬁles ❖ conrefs (and variations) ❖ keyrefs (and variations)

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Software support ❖ DITA support found in many (most?) XML authoring tools ❖ Some tools support only DITA and not general XML

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Provide output options ❖ XHTML, HTML Help, PDF, Eclipse, DocBook, JavaHelp, troff, Word RTF through DITA Open Toolkit ❖ Starting point for output ❖ Not suitable for production workﬂow ❖ Customization is difﬁcult and time-consuming

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Is DITA right for you? ﬂickr: nugunslinger

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Yes ❖ DITA meets all requirements. ❖ A business partner or customer requires DITA content. ❖ Single sourcing is a requirement. ❖ No existing content. ❖ Can be ﬂexible with markup requirements to make implementation faster.

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No. ❖ Content must conform to a speciﬁc standard, such as S1000D. ❖ Content is and should remain narrative. ❖ Semantic requirements are industry- speciﬁc, complex, and/or strict. ❖ No possibility of internal or external support for technical challenges.

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Maybe. ❖ DITA is not an exact match. ❖ Customization/specialization would be required.

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Questions?

DITA 101

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