On DITAWriter I like to provide a voice for those who are working with their own DITA implementation, and the particular issues that they face. All technical communication groups face their unique documentation situations, so the tools needed for the job will vary by need. Mr. Linarez’s technical documentation group opted for DITAToo, an “up-and-coming”Read More
Analyzing the Results from the WritersUA 2014 User Assistance Tool Survey This past Saturday WritersUA came out with its 2014 User Assistance Tool Survey, based on a wide-ranging poll of those working in the technical writing field. If you look at the WritersUA page it simply displays the raw poll results without any analysis. ItRead More
As regular readers of the DITAWriter blog will know, I like to post interviews with people who have shaped how DITA is being used. Liz Fraley, the CEO of Single-Sourcing Solutions has been there since the very beginnings of DITA and has worked with a large number of clients on a variety of XML-based solutions.Read More
In the first part of this series I looked at which DITA-capable CMSes are the most-widely used, and looked at some of the reasons for the relative popularity of these systems. In this article I look at the sizes of firms that are choosing DITA CMSes and which sectors they come from. It is clearRead More
Easily the most visited page on this website is the DITA CMSes page, listing all of the DITA-capable CMSes I have been able to track down. It typically gets several hundred visits per month—closely followed by the list of DITA Optimized Editors and the DITA-related Software Tools pages—telling me that there’s a strong need outRead More
Update March 12, 2015: Just wanted to note that the upward trend in Technical Writer hires continues, and in fact for this month (March 2015) I have just recorded the highest number of job postings for Technical Writers since I started keeping track of things three years ago. Expect an update on this and moreRead More
Over the past weekend I worked on updating the popular Companies Using DITA listing and it has reached another milestone: over 450 firms using DITA as part of their technical documentation processes are now listed. The permanent home for this list can be found here. DITA Ubiquity? One thing I came to realize as IRead More
Update June 13, 2014: You can now watch a webinar where Phil Kneer and I talk at greater length about the subjects covered in this article, courtesy of Data Conversion Laboratory. The DITA + RWD examples shown at the end of the presentation are available from the Yellow Pencil website, and the original slidedeck versionRead More
Last week I had the opportunity to do a quick interview with Noz Urbina, head of Urbina Consulting and the chief organizer (along with the folks at Mekon) of the Congility conference and workshops happening shortly in Gatwick, U.K. later this June. We talked about what exactly “Congility” is and what to expect from thisRead More
Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), which is designed to promote greater awareness of accessibility issues and the ways that we can help improve how we deliver digital content for those who require it. Accessibility has long been of interest to me and I advocate it not just because it is often a requirement,Read More
