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DITA Users Progress Blog
DITA Users on The Content Wrangler
by bobdoyle Posted at
Launched in January 2007, DITA Users is a 200 member organization for technical communicators just getting started with topic-based structured authoring. Members from sixteen countries around the world participate in various online learning opportunities designed to teach them “DITA from A to B”. “DITA from A to B” means that members can get direct experience from authoring to building their own DITA documentation sets. Their deliverables appear on the web in personalized workspace folders. Members can publish links to their projects and easily show their colleagues, clients, or employers work they did in DITA. The DITA Users website utilizes a DITA Open Toolkit running on the DITA Users server. Typically, the Open Toolkit requires a rather complicated installation that prevents many tech writers from getting self-lead, hands-on experience with DITA. By providing a shared, hosted version of the Open Toolkit online, members who don’t have a clue about installing Java components can get access to the end-to-end publishing process offered by DITA. Another thing that makes DITA Users possible is a web-based DITA XML editor called DITA Storm. There are several good DITA editors, but they are meant for use on the desktop and they cost from a few to several hundred dollars. DITA Storm provides members with a WYSIWYG, Word-style authoring tool with no installation whatsoever. A third online technology utilized by DITA Users is an IBM Eclipse Help server. DITA offers multiple output formats from the same single-source original files. In addition to XHTML web outputs and PDF print outputs, DITA Users can output online help files. They show up on the web at the DITA Users Infocenter. For a modest investment ($100/year), members develop skills they can transfer to the top DITA XML Editors and XML Component Content Management Systems. The DITA Users website lists over fifty DITA-related tools from editors to publishing engines. They also offer comprehensive product listings in their Tools A-Z section. DITA Users also has web-based localization support for translating content into many languages. Idiom Technologies has provided a WorldServer On-Demand globalization management system (GMS) to DITA Users. The website already has its navigation labels translated into French, Italian, German, and Spanish. Reduced translation costs are one of the largest returns on investment in DITA technology. Members around the world can access a web-based Translator’s Workbench that allows them to translate into locales where they are native speakers. Set your browser language preference to one of the FIGS languages and browse to the DITA Users website to see how it works. DITA Users offers three sample documentation sets organized into projects, complete with ditamaps to build out the projects as separate deliverables for XHTML, PDF, and Help. Members can modify these docsets to get their first experience with DITA. They can also build their own projects from scratch. In addition to sections called What Is DITA?, Why DITA?, The Business Case for DITA, and a History of DITA, the website also offers a comprehensive set of resources for DITA, including DITA news sources, websites, mailing lists, publications, communities, and a glossary of DITA terms. As a technology demonstration and community support tool, DITA Users maintains the DITA Infocenter, offering searchable help-style access to the major specifications for DITA – the language and architectural specifications (versions 1.0 and 1.1) and the DITA Open Toolkit User Guide. With a single search phrase, you can retrieve technical information from all these support documents in one place. DITA Users publishes a Development Road Map and a Progress Blog. They plan to launch officially at the end of August 2007. Until then, a trial membership is free. You don’t have to install anything or know XML to begin topic-based structured writing today. Consider joining today!. # | skyLink | skyWriter | Comments (0)
Idiom WorldServer On-Demand for DITA Users
by bobdoyle Posted at
We are very happy to announce that Idiom Technologies has provided DITA Users with a WorldServer On-Demand Globalization Management System (GMS). http://www.idiominc.com/ WorldServer On-Demand will greatly facilitate our efforts to localize the DITA Users website. It will allow any of you who want to be volunteer translators to have an account with access to an online translation memory (TM). This means we need only translate a given sentence (or segment) once. Since translation costs are often the leading contributor to ROI for DITA implementations, this is a great addition to the learning experience for members getting started with DITA. Localization of the DITA Users website is already underway. We have draft translations of the main website navigation into French, Italian, German, and Spanish. The three DITA docsets in your workspace folders have also been machine translated into these FIGS languages. But they need polished idiomatic translations that only native speakers, preferably living in their native culture, can provide. Our goal is to add Arabic, Chinese (simplified), Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese. With these languages we will reach over ninety percent of web users, according to Common Sense Advisory. http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/ If you can help us translate, you will have the opportunity to use the browser-based version of the Idiom WorldServer. You may also download a copy of their Desktop Workbench if you prefer to work offline. We will train you with an online screen sharing session, then provide you with an account and privileges to translate pages into your locale. We will also provide you with tech support. If you are not ready for translation, you may serve instead as reviewers and approvers of translated content. WorldServer has a sophisticated workflow that moves translations through a translate-review-approve process. Our top localization priority is of course the home page. http://www.ditanews.com # | skyLink | skyWriter | Comments (0)
200th Member of DITA Users
by bobdoyle Posted at The 200th member joined DITA Users today. We analyzed how members who join are finding us. Most come from Google (including foreign googles) after specific DITA searches, or from DITA.XML.org after a product search. Many come from our own sites like CMS Review, CMS Wiki, and DITA Infocenter. A significant number join after trying the free online demo. We are still trying to put together enough valuable member benefits to ask members for $100 a year. Is the opportunity to edit DITA docsets and share the results online enough? We should probably poll the current members to see how they feel... We added four pages that put DITA in the broader context of structured writing characteristics like modularity, information typing, minimalism, inheritance, specialization, simplified XML, simplified English, single-source, topic-based, conditional processing, component publishing, task-orientation, content reuse, multiple output formats, multi-channel delivery, writing for translation, localization, globalization, and component content management. What is DITA, Why DITA, Business Case, and History of DITA Detailed discussion on these pages will be for members only.# | skyLink | skyWriter | Comments (0)
Final Boston DITA Users Group meeting
by bobdoyle Posted at
June 2007 meeting of Boston DITA Users Group The final topic for 2006-2007 was High Tech Tools for Low Tech People. Neil Perlin discussed DITA for non-technical authors. David Pearson described development of a technology planning tool. And Susan Czerepak showed her Eclipse Help project for the DITA Manager on DITA Users. Perlin is a certified trainer for Adobe RoboHelp and Captivate, as well as Madcap Flare and Mimic. See http://www.hyperword.com. Sixty percent of his clients are low-tech. There is widespread ignorance of DITA and structured authoring among them. They don't know what DITA is or the benefits needed to make the business case. He recommends we evangelize DITA by selling the benefits. Establish whether the company needs reuse. Nancy Harrison added translation as a big benefit. Perlin says forget about XML initially. Don't show them the underlying code. Start with Word-style (WYSIWYG) tools, or tools that integrate DITA into Word, like Information Mapping's ContentMapper. Neil's powerpoint slides are online at DITA.XML.org/boston. David Pearson showed his projects with DITA Storm on the DITA Users website. He is developing a general template for technology planning. http://www.ditanews.com/Users/dpearson/ David's presentation is online at http://www.shawmuteducation.org (http://tinyurl.com/yvht4w) Susan Czerepak showed her draft DITA Manager User Guide pages. They are visible as online help at http://www.ditanews.com/eclipse Bob Doyle presented the results of a survey of possible presentation topics for the coming year. Poll results are at http://www.ditanews.com/topics.html. The most popular topic was Stylesheets. Next were Conditional Processing, Reuse, Relation Tables, DITA CMS, DITA Maps, Publishing, and Help Authoring. Stan Doherty announced a summer project in DITA 1.1 Reuse techniques. It will include a library of sample files, ready-to-build demos, and supporting explanations. Contact him at stanley dot doherty at sun.com if you would like to participate. # | skyLink | skyWriter | Comments (0)
Tutorial Topics
by bobdoyle Posted at We are identifying areas where members would like to have tutorial materials - self-paced instruction - on various DITA topics. Tutorials will be locked (
What is metadata? How to set attributes and filter or flag output for different audiences, products, etc. What is a DITA Map? How to design a map hierarchy. How to assemble your topics into maps. Designing content for reuse. What is a conref? Why does DITA need a CMS? Locating your reusable components. Adding reltables to your DITA Maps. Why are reltables better than related links in topics? Why is DITA ideal for content that must be localized? Writing for translation. Best practices for translation. DITA map as a Help TOC. DITA Open Toolkit Help options - CHM files, Eclipse Help, Jave Help. Specialization of a DITA topic. Inheritance rules. Working with the toolkit. Build files. Output files. Designing stylesheets for your deliverables. Publishing with the Open Toolkit and Publishing Engines. # | skyLink | skyWriter | Comments (0)
Localization of sample docsets
by bobdoyle Posted at The three example docsets have now been localized into French, Italian, German, and Spanish. We hope to find volunteer translators to localize to many more languages. Members can now get a quick computer gist translation of assets in their workspace folder. We are also working on localizing the site navigation. We have been talking to Lionbridge and Idiom Technologies about supporting our localization efforts with a browser-based, hosted translation management system. Then members who want to help us do translations can share our tranlation memories easily.# | skyLink | skyWriter | Comments (0)
DITA and SCORM
by bobdoyle Posted at
At the May meeting of the Boston DITA Users Group, John Hunt of IBM described the work of the DITA subcommittee for learning and training content specialization. The goal of the subcommittee is one or more new information types for learning content, at the same level as the current three main types, concept, task, and reference, plus a new map domain to assemble the content as learning objects suitable for processing as deliverables for learning management systems (LMS). Subcommittee members went to the recent Summit meeting of the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative of the Department of Defense in Alexandria, VA. ADL developed the Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), which has been adopted as a standard exchange format by all the major LMS vendors, both commercial and open-source. Just as a DITA topic is the fundamental element of reuse, a SCO is the element of learning content reuse. Reusable learning objects (RLO) are made up of instructional objects and information objects. In the Cisco/Clark model (developed by Cisco Systems with the assistance of Dr. Ruth Clark) an RLO is made up from 7 plus or minus 2 reusable information objects (RIO). These are typically wrapped in an Overview, then followed by various practice and exercise steps. Summary and Assessment objects complete the instructional object. Assessment includes testing and the subcommittee is also studying the Question-Test Interoperability (QTI) specification. They will probably adopt a subset of QTI for their question and test data model. To turn content into learning and training, the subcommittee will define four new DITA learning types for instructional objects: Instructional Design type, Learning Overview topic type, Learning Summary topic type, and Learning Assessment topic type. Information objects will need one new Learning Content topic type. They will develop a map specialization for learning, with processing options for tutorials, courseware, instructor-led training (ILT), computer-based training (CBT), web-based training (WBT), and the exchange standard SCORM. The subcommittee has laid out a timetable of seven phases culminating in submission of a draft specification to the DITA TC in spring 2008 in time for incorporation in DITA 1.2. Hunt's slides are on the Boston DITA User Group page http://dita.xml.org/boston and the subcommittee's phased plan is available at http://wiki.oasis-open.org/dita/LearningContent/Phased_Design_Plan (may require an OASIS member sign on). # | skyLink | skyWriter | Comments (0) |
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) members-only content. 
