An Introduction to DITA XML - An e-learning training course
DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is certainly the most talked-about development in the field of user documentation. If you are involved in writing documents such as user manuals, procedures or online Help, DITA promises you a framework for designing and delivering well-structured content efficiently and consistently in a single-sourcing environment. We have adapted our classroom based "Introduction to DITA", so that it is now available to you as an affordable e-learning course.
We're currently in the process of updating the course, and it will be back on sale once we have completed this exercise.
What is DITA?
DITA is open source, XML-based, and has been adopted as a standard at organisations such as IBM and Nokia. It provides a standard approach for creating task-oriented information and assembling topics into books or other outputs. DITA provide a structure designed for most technical information, and provides a way of customising it for your industry's needs.
Who is this for?
This e-learning course on DITA XML is for technical authors, writers, editors, information architects and documentation managers who see training as vital to their careers, and who want to learn about or implement structured documents.
Although DITA itself can be used in the Windows, Linux/UNIX, and Mac OS operating environments, the course material is currently available for Windows only. If you are not using Windows, do let us know of your interest in this course so we can assess the viability of creating materials for the other platforms.
What will I learn?
Following this course, you will be able to:
- Apply DITA and XML concepts and methodology
- Create well-structured, topic-oriented information
- Understand and use DITA maps
- Link and reuse topics and understand the use of conditional text
- Understand and use DITA transformations
- Recognise the need for specialisation in DITA
Topics covered
The course comprises:
- A set of e-course modules, presented as online slides with audio voiceover. You'll view and listen to these using a Web browser.
- An accompanying workbook, presented as an Acrobat (pdf) document, containing additional information and exercises.
You'll get 80mb of course notes, presentations, exercises and examples, so you'll need a broadband connection to download the course. The course takes approximately 1-2 days to complete, although, of course, you can go through it at your own pace. You can use the e-course as an audio guide to the workbook, if you prefer working in that way.
About DITA
- What is DITA?
- What is XML?
- DITA Fundamentals
- Why should I use DITA?
- DITA and reuse
Introduction to Topics
- Introduction to topics
- Topic-oriented writing
Body Elements
- Sections
- Examples
- Tables
- CALS Tables
- Images
Topics - the basis of DITA
- Types of topic
- Generic topics
- Concepts
- Tasks
- References
Organising topics
- About maps
- How to write maps
Linking and reusing topics
- Cross references
- Related links
- RELTABLES
- CONREFS
Conditional content
- Conditional content
Transforming DITA
- Why you need to transform DITA
- What is XSLT?
- What is the DITA Open Toolkit?
- What is AnT?
- What is FoP?
- Running transformations
- Using tools to create and transform DITA
- Specialising DITA
Prerequisites
Some knowledge of HTML code: the principles of tagging and its basic tags.
The course material is currently available for Windows only. If you are not using Windows, do let us know of your interest in this course so we can assess the viability of creating materials for the other platforms.
Money back satisfaction guarantee
This course comes with a 90-day money back satisfaction guarantee.
Further information
Contact us if you would like to know more about how we can help you. If you can, please state the issues you are interested in fixing. We'll respond by email or phone.