In an announcement that could easily be missed in all of the hubbub of the impending holiday season, I just saw the announcement made yesterday that the DITA 1.2 specification has officially been ratified. The press release is rambling (with “a status that signifies the highest level of ratification” mentioned twice in the same paragraph)Read More
Category: Articles
Feature articles by DITAWriter or by other contributors.
DITA Europe 2010 Conference Closing Talk
JoAnn Hackos gave the closing talk at the conference, and made the observation that DITA has not taken off in Europe as it has in North America. That was pretty much my impression as well, after talking to a number of people here. One tech writing manager I met had her ROI argument for gettingRead More
“DITA Implementation in a Geographically Dispersed Team” Presentation
After JoAnn Hackos’ brief introduction, this was the first talk I attended at the DITA Europe 2010 Conference in Vienna. As I am also dealing with issues surrounding working with DITA in what could also be called a “geographically dispersed” team, this seemed like it was right up my alley. The presentation was given byRead More
Presentation(s) at DITA Europe 2010
I’ll be doing one, maybe two presentations at the DITA Europe 2010 Conference happening in Vienna, Austria next week. The presentation titled “(Almost) Four Years On: Metrics, ROI, and other stories from a mature DITA CMS installation” is basically an update to the presentation I gave at the DITA Conference in Santa Clara earlier thisRead More
“Dubious Prospects” and DITA
Another blog site I’d like to point out to people interested in all things DITA is the one run by former work colleague of mine Graydon Saunders which he calls “Dubious Prospects“. Though focused mainly on his recreational photographic pursuits, there are over a dozen great articles collected together here on various aspects of doingRead More
“Damn You and Your Ontologies!” Some Thoughts on Folksonomies and DITA
I attended several interesting presentations while I was at the CMS/DITA 2010 Conference in Santa Clara, but one conversation I had while down there stands out from the rest, especially in terms of its implications. I met with a former work colleague and friend who now works for Google down in The Valley. I askedRead More
Multi-language Capabilities for DITA Does Not Come for Free
One of the main ROI arguments made for moving to DITA is the significant localization cost reductions that can be had: basically the more languages you output to, the better the ROI. It is worth noting though that multi-language capabilities does not come for free, as there are some one-time costs associated with going downRead More
5 Reasons Why Tech Writers Should Want to Move to DITA
All too often — this blog included — articles and papers advocating tech writing teams to move to DITA are aimed at management. This makes sense since if the tech writing team is larger than one person there are change management issues to coordinate when moving from a previous toolchain to DITA, and if aRead More
The Four Stages of Cost Savings to Expect when Moving to an XML-based Documentation Process
JoAnn Hackos has published a good article in the recent edition of the Best Practices newsletter looking at where firms can anticipate cost savings when moving to using an XML-based documentation process. She makes a good case that companies that move to using XML in their production of their technical documentation can look to gainRead More
DITA for FrameMaker Resources
Though late to the party, Adobe finally got around to doing a full revamp of FrameMaker, bolting on DITA functionality starting with version 7.2, and then fully integrated by version 8 in 2007. Here are some resources for those looking to using FrameMaker with DITA: FrameMaker 8 Deep Dive: though it takes a while toRead More