dita

This might also be a sign that the topic generally needs to be revised if you are going to move it to DITA.

The DITA content -- now in normalized SGML form -- is inserted with a slight bit of modification into the original output stream.

At the time of this writing, the formal DITA book model (known as bookmap) is still under discussion by the OASIS DITA Technical Committee.

As hinted at above, we needed to work out a few technical details when pulling DITA into the normalization processing stream.

This was tougher than the previous issues -- it was the only one of these details not included in our initial DITA support.

The highlight, programming, and UI domains provided with the base DITA release are only the beginning of what can be accomplished.

In DITA, the converse approach is possible: A book can be assembled from a set of DITA topics.

One of the things that makes processing DITA with standard transforms so useful is that those transforms are easy to override.

We solved it by keeping a list of the IDs used for every DITA target, as well as the IDs used for each (temporarily) invalid link.

Conditional processing: With DITA, you can tag parts of a topic by product, audience, or other characteristics.

Briefly, the contents of the DITA task topic are constrained to a computer-sensible structure, known as the recipe construct.

HTML and DITA have many elements in common, which makes it relatively easy to migrate from HTML into plain DITA topics.

This simple file uses DITA content to produce a PDF that automatically meets all style, translation, and accessibility rules.

In the same way, any DITA element can be extended into a new element whose identifier gets added to the class attribute through its DTD.

They were proven to work for very large books, at a time when no extremely large sets of information existed in DITA.

In addition, the DITA metadata enables many different content management approaches to be applied to its content.

The tool provided is enough to get you well on your way to the total DITA experience.

If you do not expect to use the ". dita" extension, this can be changed with the dita-extension parameter.

At the time, although I had heard of DITA, I had no practical experience with what was then a relatively new specification.

We were able to start using DITA content with our existing books long before time permitted a full-scale migration.

DITA provides a rich base for specialization because of the general design of elements used in its archetype-like topic DTD.

Domain specialization takes the place of what had been called "shared structures" in DITA's original design.

DITA is a collection of XML constructs that represents a variety of ways in which primarily textual knowledge can be structured and stored.

In the long run, it is far easier to migrate the files, clean up the DITA content, and then control any output needs with CSS.

If the example document were to use a DITA task structure, then the element offers limited options for content after the procedural steps.

The purpose of those projects is to continue to validate the DITA architecture and use the DTD in a product development environment.

Use cases are represented with DITA tasks, which identify a discrete set of steps taken to produce a result.

At the core of a DITA task is a series of steps, which can be generalized back to the ordered list class, ol. class.

With DITA, writers can assemble topics about a specific set of issues and publish them as a unique on-demand deliverable.

The DITA specialization architecture enables you to develop new DITA topic types that support learning content.

In DITA, a single topic represents a unit of information, with related topics associated with one another using a topic map.

I saw all the output formats that it could create from the sample source DITA files, and I was impressed.

DITA topics can be processed by a spectrum of tools ranging from shareware to custom tailored products, on almost any operating platform.

However, the DITA specialization already demonstrates the value of maintaining a taxonomy and classification as part of your content.

A domain extends DITA with a set of elements whose names and content models are unique to an organization or field of knowledge.

Here in Part 1, the authors posit a set of extensions to DITA XML that provide the starting point for a unifying content model for learning.

DITA supports an overall process model for designing, developing, and delivering content, which can be extended to support learning content.

It also identifies the DITA solution we chose and the rationale for it, and describes the dirty technical details of that solution.

Lionbridge has examined the DITA model and identified five key areas that your organization must consider as part of its DITA adoption.

If you do not start with topic-oriented information, you cannot create real topics just by going through DITA.

You also need to do at least minimal cleanup after your HTML topics are migrated to DITA.

Several examples of topics that should not be converted are given in the article " Why use DITA to produce HTML deliverables? "

It's crucial to know where each topic resides within the learning objective, as provided by the essential context defined in the DITA map.

Such a solution was only possible if IBMIDDoc could reference DITA content, and use it automatically.

Through discussion in the DITA forum, the significant ideas will be identified and applied to subsequent refreshes of the package.

As part of a scheme, specialized DITA map elements specify the relationships that define a thesaurus or taxonomy hierarchy (see Figure 3).

Topic-based and modular: DITA is an architecture for creating and delivering topic-based, modular technical information.

Although this is only a proof-of-concept for simple DITA content, it can be extended for more robust support in a full production system.

Finally, what if the same content is reused in two products, one of which uses only DITA, and one of which still supports IBMIDDoc books?

What binds DITA tasks and blobs together in this context is the use of PHP, which maps tasks into a binary format.

DITA supports the definition of a formal information architecture through topic and map types.

As mentioned, DITA is an XML-based documentation framework that represents each documented topic separately.

DITA is "an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. "

Through these modules, DITA provides you with the building blocks to create new combinations of topic types and domains.

The individual DITA topics have no inherent context in themselves, but acquire context according to their role within the map.

To describe specific content vocabularies that are used across the DITA topic types needed to support learning.

All of this allowed us to use DITA content without investing in an entirely new system, years before a DITA-based system was ready.

To use DITA against the example given previously, you might decide to rewrite the paragraphs that follow the procedural steps.

You might find that, with very little manual intervention, you can move completely to a DITA-sourced environment.

Listing 2 shows a DITA task detailing the steps required to reproduce an action that can be carried out on a page.

Of course, there needed to be a DITA-to-SGML conversion process.

At IBM, a team of information development professionals has developed DITA, an XML DTD and architecture specifically for technical content.

For instance, the DITA distribution includes a task type that provides a list of steps as part of the topic content.

In DITA it is much better to store this as a single list, and then control the spacing of your output with CSS.

Portable through standards: Using DITA, product groups and external business partners can easily share and exchange content.

To accomplish this task, extend the DITA unordered list element instead of a section header for all three categories.

This article, the first of two parts, explains how to get a quick start with DITA using HTML topics that are already available.

In the previous scenario, the class library authors could send their topics to another DITA shop without the class library domain.

For examples of specializations and topic-based processing with DITA information types, see Specializing topic types in DITA.

With the DITA framework, you can document how a software application and its users interact.

To organize collections of DITA learning topics for assembly and delivery as a learning course.

It uses an entity reference to point to DITA topics or maps, and can be used in any location that allows divisions.

Also, users of this DITA specialization should bear in mind that SKOS itself hasn't yet progressed to an approved standard.

Rather than being a radical departure from the familiar, DITA builds on well-accepted sets of tags and can be used with standard XML tools.

Can topic-based DITA XML provide the basis for developing an information architecture for single-sourced XML learning content?

For instance, a DITA map can organize the content topics to provide a navigation hierarchy or define related links for those topics.

Spawned from a workgroup effort at IBM and now an OASIS open standard , DITA has it roots in best practices for technical authoring .

Topic-based DITA XML provides essential ingredients for developing reusable learning content.

The DITA architecture is focused on topics, relatively small pieces of information that can fit in a browser window with minimal scrolling.

Welcome to the cover page for the DITA forum, a discussion about the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA).

Many of you are already familiar with the advantages of XML in general and DITA in particular for creating technical content.

Dita Amory, the show's chief curator, explains that these, and indeed all the pictures painted before 1923, were deliberately omitted .

First, it's important to say yes, in some situations it might make more sense to create outputs directly in HTML, as opposed to DITA XML.

When including DITA as SGML fragments, you must declare those fragments as SGML entities, to be resolved later.

Several topics can relate to each other by means of DITA maps, or documents that help you navigate among a series of topics.

Using DITA map domains, you can express these design patterns in XML so authors can reuse them consistently for many collections of content.

The information contained in each test concept document is drawn directly from a DITA concept in the pages directory.

In short, the DITA domain feature provides for great flexibility in extending and reusing information types.

DITA is a topic-oriented architecture now managed by the OASIS DITA Technical Committee.

DITA has three types of topic: a generic topic, or information-typed concept, task, and reference topics.

The typed topics represent the fundamental structuring layer for DITA topic-oriented content.

When you add a domain to your DITA installation, the new domain provides you with additional modules.

However, in some cases the existing structure of the data does not map reliably to a proper DITA element.

Updates to the DITA content since its last use may not be reflected in the translated file.

DITA includes three information types derived from the base topic type: task, concept, and reference.

DITA includes a base set of DTDs and framework that allows for specialization using derived DTDs and processing conventions.

The DITA package provides a DTD for each topic type and an omnibus DTD (ditabase. dtd) that defines all of the topic types.

You must set several environment variables and identify other relationships so the pieces of the DITA OT all work together properly.

Download the DITA Open Toolkit, the open source processing system required to use the attached ZIP file.

The first step in enhancing your topic deals with the content of the DITA task topic elements.

DITA represents an information model for technical product content.

A DITA topic map relating reference topics describes these pages to the related use cases.

What happens when these books need to be updated -- should new content be authored in IBMIDDoc or DITA?

You can also use DITA maps after migration to reconstitute hierarchies by defining nesting for the converted topics.

In DITA, the core information unit is a topic, which describes a single task, concept, or reference item.

DITA has the following layers that relate to specific design points expressed in its core DTD, topic.

With DITA, you author content in small, independent units that you assemble into deliverables, such as online help, books, or courses.

After all DITA content was processed, that content was scanned for invalid IDs.

When you convert links, the extensions for any local HTML topics are changed to ". dita" .

The DITA topic map plays the role of a use case model.

Many publishing options did not yet exist for DITA, such as transforms to README-style text or full book-like PDF.

Linking and Web management: DITA makes it possible to create and maintain cross-topic links from outside the topic itself.

What if the books will be converted to DITA eventually, but there is no time to do so now?

Core DITA provides the starting point to develop a content model for learning.

The folder structure for the sample DITA project is very flat, with directories for cases and pages.

In particular, a taxonomy of subjects has a natural tree structure that can have a straightforward representation as a specialized DITA map.

DITA is the semantic framework for the information.

In this way, you can use DITA structural specialization to extend DITA into the use case domain.

In our SGML DTD, a DITA topic corresponds roughly to a division element.

In many cases, articles already contain specific markup that can easily match DITA structures.

We have several projects underway that are using DITA.

Most importantly, we could not start using DITA until the new tools were ready.

This article explains the design technique for creating a DITA map domain.

link_to anchorref These attributes refer to an insertion point (anchor) in another topic hierarchy (a TOC or a DITA map file).

In turn, specializes directly from the DITA generic base topic.

DITA tasks also allow for unordered steps; this support does not yet exist in the migration utility.

Under Projects select the org. dita. dost. doc project to import.

As a result, the SKOS-compatible DITA specialization could undergo some evolution.

Convert the translated DITA to SGML, and send those translated fragments with the English book.

Listing 1 is a sample migration, showing the input XHTML lined up with the DITA output.

In addition, DITA provides the content topics that are classified and other information about those topics.

Are you ready to localize DITA-driven content?

Also, this solution is not possible if the DITA topics and SGML files are being translated at the same time.

It is simple to point to a DITA topic or map from an existing book.

In order to merge content or reuse existing tools, it is also necessary to have a conversion from DITA to the current format.

This article shows you how to leverage the extensible DITA DTD to describe new domains of information.

DITA topic maps are kept in the root of the project.

Also, DITA makes use of the popular OASIS (formerly CALS) table model.

The doc directory contains the JavaTOC User Guide and the org. dita. dost. doc plugin API Documentation (an example) in HTML format.

In this case, because the step is entirely plain text, the migration utility will place everything in DITA's element.

Or you might want to clearly delineate sections of content so that you can easily repurpose them using a technology like DITA.

Listing 3 is a portion of the DITA map for "Module 2 -- Using Query Monitor" of the pilot course.

HTML is more appropriate than DITA when you need to create a one-of-a-kind interface, such as a calculator tool.

Send the SGML and DITA files together, with instructions on how to merge them post-translation.

An ID attribute on a DITA topic is required.

DITA has broad tastes, so you can mix domains as needed.

The DITA topic map for this simple application, in Listing 3, is also simple.

The DITA task topic describes how to complete a procedure to accomplish a specific goal.

Convert the English DITA file to SGML, and send the whole English book to translation.

All were simple compared to rewriting the full toolset for DITA.

Find additional information on DITA at the.

If we had waited for formal approval of bookmap, we would still not be producing books from DITA today.

One big advantage is that it provides a shortcut to output formats that our DITA toolkit does not yet support.

If you tell the dost. jar file of DITA OT which source DITA file to transform and the output format you want, it can do the rest.

In DITA, the topic is the basic unit of processable content.

Find additional information on DITA at.

With no time to convert the original book to DITA, this is an ideal time to use the XMLObj element.

An engagement ring for Dita Von Teese. I didn't get a refund.

Historical data use a variety of standards, such as XML, CSV, XLS, PDF, DITA, and XBRL.

Any migration to DITA works better for information that is already stored in this manner.

The highest standard structure in DITA is the topic.

We created a path to old output formats that were not yet supported from DITA.

Simply pass in your preferred value (such as dita-extension=xml), or change the value in the source code.

Alternatively, you can use an industry-standard structure (for example, MIL-SPEC, DITA, DocBook).

This is the same approach that DITA takes.

The first article in this series focused on how to use the HTML-to-DITA migration tool that is currently in use within IBM.

One of the design points of DITA has been to exploit the reuse of common substructures within the world of XML.

As the "Architecture" part of DITA's name suggests, DITA has unifying features that serve to organize and integrate information

Through topic granularity and topic type specialization, DITA brings the following benefits of the object-oriented model to information sets

Including DITA by reference solves all of the problems raised so far

Key phases in a DITA end-to-end process model for developing and delivering learning content include

The call in Listing 3 creates a task, using a generated ID for the task's ID and ". dita" as the default extension

DITA articles are generally divided by information type: The tool as written supports migrations to

howto: Design patterns for information architecture with DITA map domains

Design patterns for information architecture with DITA map domains

The DITA approach to topic-based writing focuses on three fundamental types of topic

Structure topics for delivery with a DITA map

DITA leverages the advantages inherent in XML and extends beyond those advantages in the following ways

DITA's unique strength for technical information stems from two key features

A DITA map domain specifies a set of specialized

Destination directory for output files (org. dita. dost. doc)

As specified by SKOS and implemented in the DITA specialization, a subject classification has the following parts

DITA typed topic specializations (infotyped topics)

If you are unfamiliar with DITA, the following two articles are a good place to start

Find out more about DITA in a companion article,

Main features of the DITA architecture

Use DITA XML to develop reusable learning content

A DITA process model for learning content

Role of content communities in DITA

Simple steps to move from HTML to DITA

you can download the source files directly from the SOURCEFORGE website: DITA-OT1. 3_src. zip

The structure of a DITA topic

You need the doctype to continue using the topics after they are in DITA. In this case, you have several options

Element, which is based on the core DITA