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To answer the question "Why DITA?" we need to search for the purpose of DITA in the minds of its creators and its current custodians.
DITA is the latest version of several standards efforts going back to the 1960's at IBM to improve technical documentation. The industry goal is to encourage the development of interoperable tools. The organization goal is to make documentation easier to produce. The end-user goal is to make documentation easier to use as well as more valuable for the user.
The high level of current attention to DITA is the result of considerable marketing buzz from software vendors who incorporate DITA technology and from consultants and documentation training specialists who run workshops and conferences on technical publication methods and tools.
The attention is deserved -
DITA incorporates many features based on decades of research in methods for technical documentation - like modularity, structured writing, information typing, minimalism, inheritance, specialization, simplified XML, single-source, topic-based, conditional processing, component publishing, task-orientation, content reuse, multi-channel, and translation-friendly.
To help you understand who is behind DITA, we analyze the DITA industry so you know who the major players are. Some have been leading the technical documentation field for years, others are relative newcomers.
If you don't understand the standards organizations and vendors behind DITA, you may not have analyzed the
DITA Business Case properly - for your organization, or for yourself if you are a professional writer.
You don't have to know these things to use DITA, but if there is no one in your organization who knows them, you may have a problem. This analysis of the DITA industry is
for members only.
