Posts Tagged ‘DITA’
TECHNICAL BOOK REVIEW: "Practical DITA" – A Nuts-and-Bolts Guide to Structured Technical Writing
Julio Vazquez has written a great book: Practical DITA. It’s a tightly-written thin volume (only 100 pages including the Index) that has a lot of nuts-and-bolts type of practical how-to information on DITA — Darwin Information Typing Architecture. The distinguishing characteristic of this short but comprehensive volume is the way it takes you by the…
Read MoreA Source of Potential Component Conflict when Multiple Authors Work in Structured Authoring Environment
Multiple authors writing “components” instead of “pages” is the future of technical communications (if not technical training and e-learning). When it comes to documentation, it really makes sense to “write once and publish multiple times”, as the saying goes. And that’s only possible if we all get used to writing “components” (sometimes also referred to…
Read MoreThings to Avoid in Modular Component Writing for Structured Authoring and Single-Sourcing
In true “structured authoring” the “components” you create (write, draw, etc.) are saved in the database of a Content Management System (CMS). The negative side of this type of “writing” is that you lose the local context and formatting. What you’re creating is not “only” an X-type of document but a “component” (let’s say, a…
Read MoreDITA – Bright Promise. Bumpy Ride.
© Ugur Akinci DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is an XML-based structured authoring platform that I’ve been studying for the last couple of years. Sarah O’Keefe and her colleagues at Scriptorium Publishing Services have been a reliable source in my struggle to understand the landscape of this “brave new frontier” looming over our technical communication…
Read MoreGraphic Design & Single-Sourcing — Revitalize Your Technical Communication Career in the Post-Writing Phase
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Technical communication is a great exciting field full of material and non-material rewards. But if you’ve been in the business for 5 or over 10 years, things can start getting a bit stale. You’ll know when that time comes to push your career up to a new orbit. You can spark…
Read MoreTechnical Book Review – THE COMPASS: Essential Reading About XML, DITA, and Web 2.0
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Here is a mighty little volume by Scriptorium.com that should be mandatory reading for all those either brand new to structured authoring or looking for technical details about DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) OT (Open Toolkit) and PDF generation. The last chapter on “Web 2.0 in Technical Communication” is also good…
Read MoreReusable Components in Structured Authoring
© Ugur Akinci It is useful to take an inventory of all the reusable components (text strings) in your technical documents as a prelude to structured authoring. Whether you use DocBook, DITA, or some other XML-based system, identifying the reusable components in your documents is an important prerequisite before you make the switch to XML-based…
Read MoreTechnical Writing – What is DITA?
© Ugur Akinci DITA is an acronym which stands for Darwin Information Typing Architecture. It is a method of technical writing and publishing based on XML (Extensible Markup Language). Just like the web language HTML is based on tags like <title>, <p>, etc. XML is also based on tags some of which it shares with…
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