This document discusses improving documentation for open source projects by making it more modular, reusable, and using open standards like DITA. It introduces single sourcing of documentation and DITA, and describes how Drupal and DITA can be combined to allow documentation to become a modular unit that is collaboratively developed and adapted for different contexts. Future visions include better integration of DITA metadata and structures into Drupal to improve technical authoring and documentation workflows.

1. Making (Drupal) Documentation Modular, Reusable and Open Source how Darwin can help our angels SFD Szeged 2011

2. Attending “Making Documentation Modular, Reusable and Open Source” by @kvantomme #szszk2011 #DITA

4. An intro to single sourcing

5. An intro to DITA

6. A future vision

7. 2 shameless plugs

8. GOAL:

9. a starting point to lean startup methodologies

11. Do you deliver custom products (services)?

12. Are you happy with your documentation?

13. Are you using an open source platform?

14. Documentation of Open Source projects is broken

15. Why?

16. Developers only really document in code

17. Symptoms

18. We don't collaborate

19. We don't reuse

20. We don't adapt

21. Solution

23. Different contexts of use

24. Technical publishing in different formats MINIMALISM, STRUCTURED

26. Topic oriented != book oriented

27. Maps: Separation navigation & content

28. Conref: content references = transclusion

29. Conditional text : context specific docs

30. Metadata : loads of it

32. Concept topic : e.g. definitions, rules, guidelines

34. Combining Drupal & DITA

36. Everyone contributes to documentation

37. A new niche grows in our community for technical writers

38. Projects can be documented from a Fingerprint (XML settings dump)

40. Interoperability

41. Extensibility

42. Human friendly metadata handling

43. Game dynamics (user points)

44. social graph (Facebook integration)

45. Community tools (those web 2.0 things)

46. RDFa (those web 3.0 things)

48. Conditional text

49. Conrefs

51. More documentation writers

53. Store in Drupal, export in DITA

54. Currently implemented for tasks and concepts

55. Drupal DITA forms

56. Drupal DITA form builder (CCK)

60. Folder importer

62. Create a new DITA map in the GUI

63. Export the map and the topics it contains

64. Ditamaps as mindmaps

65. Add content with Views queries

66. Ditamaps as mindmaps

67. Export with Open Toolkit

68. You can download this for free at http://drupal.org/project/dita

70. DITA form to DITA XML Graphical UI

71. Authoring memory

72. Conref library

73. WYSIWYG or markup

75. DITA distribution

77. Outlines as maps -> new hierarchy for book?

78. Help in core initiative

79. Imagine...

80. Documentation in a distro world

81. Shameless plug

82. http://topicforge.net/

83. [email_address]

84. Twitter @kvantomme LinkedIn be.linkedin.com/in/kvantomme [email_address]