Now, as i read yesterday, there is another, third approach modular authoring. The darwin information typing architecture dita is an xmlbased, endtoend architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. Topicbased writing refers to the method of writing content so that its chunked into short topics instead of longer chapters or documents. Topic based authoring is an aspect of structured authoring. Learn why it is fast becoming the standard for technical communication worldwide. During the third and longest portion of the boot camp, youll learn to. What makes topic based authoring superior in modern techcomm. The writer can use this topic in as many sections and document as they wish, and as many times as needed.
Madcap flare vs dita learn more about the power and flexibility of topic based authoring without the hassle and expense of dita. Topicbased authoring and smart content reuse lets you release your docs in a. A dita based authoring tool wont provide a means for including dhtml effects, including popups and expansion links. Topicbased authoring lets you create and reuse content, reduces project schedules, and improves your workflow. When the content can be divided into several topics, each topic module of the contents is converted into an object and this set of objects is managed by a technical writer. It enables modular, topic based authoring through rich, semantic markup. Members approve darwin information typing architecture. Dita xml component content management system vasont. A topic is authored as a unit, not as part of a larger document. When authoring in dita, you can also use the dita open toolkit ditaot to publish output. If you are looking to move to a structured writing environment such as dita, its the first set of steps towards that goal. This location is not intended to be transformed by the dita processing software e. Authoring through the lens of the printed page is the barrier that many people new to topicbased authoring must overcome. In structured technical writing, each topic, paragraph, sentence, list item, or table entry has a function that is strictly defined.
Dita uses a ditamap which contains links to the xml files in the documentation set. When youre exploring software documentation, make a list of all the tasks you. A shout out and thank you to madcap software for creating a tool that lets us quickly and easily repackage existing content into a covid19 toolkit. Content in dita is authored in topics, rather than in larger documents or publications. The base topic types provided by dita a generic topic, plus concept, task, and reference provide a usable starter set that can be adopted for immediate authoring. That is a basic principle of topic based authoring. Lwdita also definesmappings between xml, html5, and markdown, enabling authoring, collaboration, and publishing across different markup languages.
In this exercise, youll create task and concept topics. However, if you will be having nonwriters contribute content, you will want. The target of an external link is any location outside the overall dita document. It is an open standard that is defined and maintained by the oasis dita technical committee the name derives from the following components. Translate the concepts of dita model topic based structured content into high value. Dita can help you increase productivity and reduce costs while gaining the advantages of international standards, vendor independence, and broad availability of skills. Our dita xml content management system focuses on the dita standard by providing ditaspecific functionality and reporting. Fullfeatured editors are designed for people who write documentation fulltime i. This was pretty much my idea of topicbased authoring. Sanofi structured authoring with dita ditaexchange.
The main goal of topicbased approach is the content reuse. Topicbased authoring for knowledge bases knowledgeowl. Dita open toolkit is a publishing tool used to process dita content and convert it to. Paligo is a stateoftheart technical documentation platform with authoring. The darwin information typing architecture or document information typing architecture dita is an xml data model for authoring and publishing. So even if you dont need all the power dita provides it may still be the fastest and easiest path to xml based document authoring and production. Dita can also be extended to allow for the definition of information types. And as help expands to cover a wider range of products to be consumed on one or more of a vast array of devices, wellstructured, topicbased writing becomes ever more important. Topic reuse is the easiest method of reusing content in dita. This architecture consists of a set of design principles for creating informationtyped modules at a topic level and for using that content in delivery modes such as online help and product support portals on the web.
Dita is the oasis standard for topic based information development. In dita a topic is the basic unit of authoring and of reuse. With a modular approach, one work can lead to many publications. What is a good software for topicbased documentation writing. Topicbased authoring implementations often focus on learning writing patterns, techniques, and technologies like dita and ccms. In technical communication, topicbased authoring is a modular approach to content creation. The darwin information typing architecture is a standard designed to help authors create topicbased structured content. Although flare is an ideal environment for topicbased authoring, once we start writing, some of us still create text density more appropriate for outofdate paper. It enables you to efficiently manage thousands of dita files or other xml files, such as sd or docbook and make sense of. Misconceptions about topicbased authoring id rather be writing. This is because our help bases are online and providing singular, topicbased articles helps customers to use our software better. Speed up your migration with direct import from microsoft word, madcap flare, dita, docbook, html. Fontoxmldita authoring fontoxml is still in the process of developing their xml authoring environment to support the dita standard fully.
Move from structured authoring and minimalism into the details of the darwin information typing architecture dita. However, hypertext is a delivery format, whereas dita is an authoring format. However, dita can nonetheless be used to create professionallooking help files with the core functionality of help files. Clickhelp is software for help writers that supports the topic based approach. Dita open toolkit is a publishing tool used to process dita content and convert it to other formats. If necessary, the writer can group several topics into a single cluster or a map and reuse those just as easily. There is some association with hypertext, which is also topic based, and often modular. Xmetal supports editing of lightweight dita xml topics and maps. Content reuse dita topicbased authoring is a modular approach. The opensource publishing engine for content authored in the darwin information typing architecture. The dita standard provides different topic types to structure information. It provides three basic topic types but it allows for specialization of these topic types for individual needs.
Documentation solutions the free and easy wysiwyg dita. In this world, therefore, topicbased authoring came to mean writing discrete reusable parts of a document in isolation. What is the difference between structured authoring and. Topicbased authoring first gained popularity with technical and professional writers when. Dita is an xml based open standard for structuring, developing, managing, and publishing content. You can use oxygen, which is very fullfeatured, or arbortext, or any number of xml authoring tools. Dita ccms for adobe experience manager technical communication suite framemaker. It incorporates special features for localization, accessibility, and robust conditional processing. When a concept or a task or even a reference item is refined to its most concise and correct form, it can be used in multiple documents because the item does not depend on what comes before or after it. Each xml file can be a topic or a collection of topics. Structured, topic based authoring in robohelp, by neil perlin. Structured authoring and xml can eliminate this silo mentality without necessarily forcing either group to implement the preferred software tools of the other group. The fundamental difference is that a cms thinks in pages, whereas a ccms thinks in topics components its for topic based authoring based on xml standards such as dita.
The darwin information typing architecture dita is an open standard for creating and assembling structured, topic based content that you can quickly and easily distribute across multiple platforms. Paligo the next generation of technical documentation. Information typing dita uses information typing to categorize content into three main types. Dita has a topicbased architecture, requiring a topicbased approach to document authoring. Regardless of where they occur, all topics have the same basic structure and capabilities. You need to make sure the tool understands all the definitions that make dita or docbook work, so that the writers are prevented from putting together invalid combinations of tags. You need a new approach, one that emphasizes a minimalistic, topic based writing style and reuse of existing material. The standard is managed by the organization for the advancement of structured information standards dita technical committee. The key to understanding how dita works is to understand how dita uses topics, maps, and output formats. A document may contain one topic or multiple topics, and a document type might support authoring one or many kinds of topics. Patented xml structure bars to give authors a view of the underlying xml structure, without complicating authoring environment with distracting xml tags. We hear the term topic based authoring quite a lot. Topics can be written to be independent of one another and reused wherever needed. In this second part, eric will explain how component based authoring actually works, why dita is the stateoftheart xml standard of choice, and why a cms is needed to keep track of all the.
Topic structure all topics have the same basic structure, regardless of topic type. It contains a separate, optional plugin topic picker that allows users to find and reuse topics onthefly, quickly and easily. The dita darwin information typing architecture model provides an open xml content standard defining a common structure that promotes the consistent creation, sharing and reuse of information. Install dita open toolkit for structured authoring, topic based. If you are looking to migrate from an existing nonstandard sgml or xml system to a standard based system, again. Each topic should be authored around a single subject of content. Dita exchange desktop contains a word plugin that allows you to create, edit and tag dita topics, turning microsoft word into a fullfeatured dita authoring tool capable of outputting dita content to a variety of formats using word templates. During the negotiation phase, i had identified that topic based content development would be advantageous to meeting our goals, but that could have been carried out in a number of ways. The dita style guide is not authoringtool specific, so by necessity it uses neutral code examples, rather than examples of what might appear in a wysioo editor, or other toolspecific interactions. If you are technical communicators, dita or docbook are good like others have said. Topics are assembled from a single pool or repository into different deliverable documents. The development of sgml almost two decades later enabled structured approaches to be enforced by software tools. The darwin information typing architecture dita is an open xml standard for structured authoring.
Topicbased authoring is very modern approach and popular for large technical documentation projects. Dita topics are the most granular units of dita content. While a topic in the every page is page one sense is the unit delivered to the reader, a topic in the dita sense is the unit the writer writes and often it has to be combined with other units to make something that is useful to the reader. Each group authors in its preferred application, and then exports to xml for interchange. Xml authoring in dita, structured framemaker, content insets. Topicoriented authoring for conceptual and task information has its roots in minimalism. The dita wiki knowledge base explains that the topicbased authoring has been a mainstay of technical information development since we first began developing help systems. For topicbased writing, you are probably working in dita or docbook xml. Dita users a member organization helping people get started with topicbased structured writing oasis dita focus area the official oasis. In this webinar, we explore the advantages of topic based authoring over traditional authoring, showcase some of the rich singlesourcing capabilities of flare, and.
Those are important and useful, but topicbased authoring doesnt. Structured authoring can mean many things, but in the context of this document. Like dita, flare and blaze are based on xml and take a topic based approach, which has made the addition of dita support a natural extension to our authoring software, said mike hamilton. Install dita open toolkit for structured authoring, topicbased writing and. Th e intended user is the technical expert or other large groups of users already familiar with msword. A topicbased architecture opens up the opportunity for large scale content reuse. It is an open standard that is defined and maintained by the oasis dita technical committee. Authoring tools based on the dita open standard fall into two general categories based on the intended user type. Topicbased authoring and ease of use easy to use visual editor that allows an author to see, or not see as much xml as needed. The term topic can be thought of as being short for topical information unit, or a topical unit of discourse.
1502 197 251 1382 1182 19 92 718 1213 794 955 713 1457 1491 1232 3 199 474 1443 1243 415 1375 1126 341 709 1057 534 1061 1260 139 752