Modular Monolith - a Practical Alternative to Microservices @ Devoxx UK 2024
DITA 101 -- Why the Buzz
1. DITA 101: Why the Buzz?
Sarah O'Keefe
Scriptorium Publishing
2. About the presenter
Sarah O'Keefe
Founder and president, Scriptorium Publishing
Consultant
Experienced with lots of different publishing
ideas, including XML and DITA
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6. What is DITA?
Darwin Information Typing Architecture
Darwin – because you can evolve new elements
from existing elements
Information Typing – content is categorized as
task, reference, concept
Architecture – includes components for reuse,
single sourcing, and generating output
Developed by IBM, maintained by OASIS
7. Why is DITA important? Is DITA
important?
Structured authoring is creating content with
programmatic enforcement of the required
structure
DITA is a gateway to structured authoring
8. What is DITA, really?
XML standard
Built for topic-oriented authoring
A way to work in XML without having to design
your own structure?
A major buzzword in tech comm
Cost-effective way to create, publish, reuse, and
exchange structured content
9. DITA components
Document type
definitions (DTDs)
Open Toolkit for
generating output
HTML, Eclipse help,
CHM, and others
through XSL
PDF through XSL-FO
Documentation
10. DITA publishing
DITA topics
DITA Open Toolkit
HTML
CHM
PDF
Eclipse help
…
DITA map fileDITA topics
Links
<topic>
...
</topic>
DITA map file
<map>
<topic>...
</topic>
<topic>...
</topic>
</map>
17. DITA's niche
Topic-oriented, modular content
Content reuse
Information exchange with other organization
Semantic requirements are minimal
Basic metadata (audience, platform, output) is
adequate
18. DITA strengths
Topic-oriented, modular
Support for reuse of
topics (map files)
Support for reuse of content
(content references)
Specialization mechanism for
customization of content model
20. DITA topic (simplified)
<topic id=”seuss”>
<title>One tag, two tag</title>
<body>
<p>Red tag, blue</p>
<p>Black tag, blue tag, old tag,
new tag</p>
<p>This one has a little car</p>
<p>This one has a little star</p>
<note>Say, what a lot of tags there
are!</note>
</body>
</topic>
21. <?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE dita PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA
Composite//EN" "ditabase.dtd">
<dita>
<topic id="aardvark" audience="internal">
<title>Aardvark</title>
<body>
<p>Aardvarks eat mostly termites. </p>
<p>Do not take the aardvarks' offer to
help deal with your termite problem. You
will <b>not</b> like the results.</p>
<note type="danger" id="nofeeding">Do not
feed animals snacks, scraps, or people
food.</note>
</body>
</topic>
</dita>
26. conrefs <topic id="aardvark">
...
<note type="danger" id="nofeeding">Do not
feed animals snacks, scraps, or people food.
…
<topic>
Named destination in Aardvark.xml
id="baboon">
<title>Baboon</title>
<body>
<p>Baboons eat mostly fruit.</p>
<p>
<note conref="Aardvark.xml#aardvark/nofeeding"/>
</p>
</body>
</topic>
Link in Baboon.xml
27. Specialization
Lets you create additional elements without
breaking DITA Open Toolkit processing.
New element is a specialization of the base
element.
This is what put the D in DITA.
28. The structure you need versus the
structure you have...
Customization
Subsetting
Specialization
32. Business case for XML
Content exchange
Database publishing
Reuse content/reduce duplication
Automated formatting/publishing
Compliance
33. Beyond XML's business case, DITA
may...
Reduce content modeling effort
Make content truly portable
Support content reuse
Take advantage of software support
Provide output options
Reduce overall cost of implementation
34. Reduce content modeling effort
Assume that DITA structure is a reasonable
match
Speed up the transition to structure
But what if DITA
doesn't match?
Does your industry
have special
requirements?
35. Make content truly portable
Do you need to send
content to a customer,
partner, vendor, other
department?
Will they standardize
on DITA?
37. Software support
DITA support found in many (most?) XML
authoring tools
Some tools support only DITA and not general
XML
38. Provide output options
XHTML, HTML Help, PDF, Eclipse, DocBook,
JavaHelp, troff, Word RTF through DITA Open
Toolkit
Starting point for output
Not suitable for production workflow
Customization is difficult and time-consuming
40. Yes.
DITA meets all requirements.
A business partner or customer requires DITA
content.
Single sourcing is a requirement.
No existing content.
Can be flexible with markup requirements to
make implementation faster.
41. No.
Content must conform to a specific standard,
such as S1000D
Content is and should remain narrative.
Semantic requirements are industry-specific,
complex, and/or strict.
42. Maybe
DITA is not an exact match.
Customization/specialization would be
required.
