While I will not be there in person at this year’s ConVEx 2022 conference in Tempe, AZ, I will be doing a couple of virtual presentations. The first is called “From Papyrus to the Virtual Elephants in Rooms” that I will be doing with co-presenter Jo Lam. The scope of this presentation looks at howRead More
This is a list of the “other” tools that are not DITA-optimized XML editors, or DITA-capable Component Content Management Systems (CCMSes). It’s a motley collection of tools, many of them customized specifically for use with DITA. All prices are in $US except where noted. Prices listed are current as of February 11, 2015. * DesignedRead More
In addition to DITA-capable Component Content Management Systems (CCMSes) and DITA-optimized XML editors, there are various other tools available to help documentation teams and individual technical writers who are working with DITA. In the work I have done as a consultant for Yellow Pencil, I often find that organizations require more sophisticated output features thanRead More
When I was compiling a list of DITA-supporting software tools recently, I ran across one firm based out of Ottawa in Canada called Samalander (not a typo) that didn’t just make one DITA-related tool, but at last count has made no less than ten of them, ranging from DITA metrics tools to link checkers andRead More
When it rains it pours: yesterday I mentioned the free Webinar JoAnn Hackos will be giving where she will mention the results of the latest CIDM survey. Then I got an email from RSI Content Solutions, who make the DocZone DITA CMS which said that they were also planning on doing a Webinar presentation scheduledRead More
When I was first investigating how DITA XML was being used by others at conferences in the mid-2000s, one of the questions that always came up at the end of a session was: “how big should a DITA topic be?” Even at the time I thought that this was kind of a silly question, sinceRead More
I had the real honour this morning to give the keynote presentation at the Content Management Strategies/DITA North America conference in La Jolla, California this morning. Titled “The Rainmaker, The Cloud and The Downspout” I talked about DITA metrics, what I have found in my survey of who and where DITA is being used, andRead More
There’s just a few days to go before the big Content Management Strategies/DITA North America Conference in La Jolla, California. Am looking forward to presenting the keynote talk there, and to meet with other people in the industry and learn about the latest developments in DITA and technical documentation practice in general. I have learnedRead More
I liked a recent post on technical communications metrics on the the Mark Lewis blog recently, and while I don’t agree with the conclusion (any metric based on word counts and a subjective evaluation of quality is problematic IMHO) it did get me thinking about the topic of documentation metrics in general. I have doneRead More
When I was trying to figure out the best ways to measure the type of output that my group produces, I found most of what I needed online. Here are the sources I found helpful. Useful Pre-DITA Era Articles on Metrics Articles on how to take metrics for technical documentation groups were few and farRead More
