CoverPages Describes DITA

From Cover Pages the online resource for markup language technologies
DITA defines an XML architecture for designing, writing, managing, and publishing many kinds of information in print and on the Web. DITA consists of a set of design principles for creating 'information-typed' modules at a topic level. DITA enables organizations to deliver content as closely as possible to the point-of-use, making it ideal for applications such as integrated help systems, web sites, and how-to instruction pages.

DITA's modular architecture,supports efficient reuse of content at the word, phrase or topic level. DITA also has the concept of "specialization," which allows you to develop elements of your own that are based on core DITA elements.

The DITA Open Toolkit is an implementation of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee's specification for Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) DTDs and Schemas. The Toolkit transforms DITA content (maps and topics) into deliverable formats.

Unlike book-oriented approaches that are based on chapters and pages, DITA uses topics - small chunks of information that can be easily reused across various contexts and deliverables. DITA also has built-in extensibility support, meaning you can customize document type definitions (or DTDs) without breaking compatibility with existing applications and processes. For these reasons and more, DITA goes beyond any previous approach in helping you overcome barriers to XML adoption, maximize content reuse, and reduce information redundancy.

Bob Doyle for DITA

The Man Who Helped Invent Video Games, Desktop Publishing, and New Tools to Help you Learn Topic-Based Authoring

DITA Users Org Membership level - $100/year, $50/year, or free. —   Login eaglecode: m.y-ecn+gy#

DITA Specialization tutorial on xiruss.org

DITA Users Tutorials

DITA Tutor okay for 1-time guests - needs login

Lone-DITA Community for Lone or Small Documentation Teams — Tutorial Register/Login

gotapi.com   online reference to the DITA standard.

The purpose of the site is to help writers who are good at what they are doing, but need to get involved with topic-based structured writing. As you know, if you want to start to use DITA, in most cases you need to download and install the DITA Open Toolkit. For most tech writers (who are not really techies) it's really quite complicated to download. DITA Users need not install anything or know XML to begin topic- based structured writing using the DITAUsers.org web site. They can use the browser-based DITA Storm editor or the desktop XML editor with WebDAV access to author structured content in their own online workspace folder.

Writers can have multiple projects in their personal workspace, or writing teams can share a workspace. Each project includes source files, build files, and output files. They can process files to HTML, PDF, Help, and other publishing formats with the DITA Open Toolkit on our server.

Read Doyle's article on Assembly-Line Writers at EContent Magazine.

DITA sites

Other independent sites

ditamap.com and

DITAWorld.com,

plus of course see DITA on Wikipedia.

Resources

Legacy Conversion Glossary from Data Conversion Lab

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Doxygen
Doxygen is a documentation generator designed for using in-software comments to automatically generate documentation. WordWarrior has a goal to develop a similar auto-generating documentation tool for aerospace engineering, autogenerating parts lists, with a next-leap to maintenance manuals. Doxygen on Wikipedia.