DITA - Slaying sacred cows or burying problems?

There have been a number of posts recently on whether some commonly accepted best practises in technical writing are actually needed these days. This has come about as people question how they can develop the DITA standard to handle things like lead-in sentences and stem sentences.

These don't fit into the standard, and a number of people are now saying we don't really need them. This is very convenient for the DITA standard - it makes the problem go away.

My concern about this is that there has been research that shows "Lexical repetition, cohesive devices and other textual features will need to be incorporated into specifications right from the start, i.e. during the document planning stage." Indeed, we wrote a blog post on this research back in December.

I trust the needs of the reader will be balanced with the needs of the writer when coming up with an efficient writing standard that works for the reader.

New updated DITA ecourse released (finally)

Tomorrow (or possibly tonight) we'll be releasing the updated version of our popular ecourse "An Introduction to DITA".

Updated to reflect the changes in the DITA standard

Updated to reflect the changes in the DITA Open Toolkit from version 1.3 to 1.4.2.1

Updated to reflect the changes in the downloading processes for installing the various tools associated with DITA.

New audio to improve the quality of the voiceovers

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.

See An Introduction to DITA.

Our DITA XML training course - Update

Carol is in the studio today, recording the audio track for the new, updated, version of our self-teach online course on DITA XML. She has to record 140(!) audio segments, which will take some time to complete. The development team will then match (within Abobe Captivate) these segments with the visuals and slides, ready, I think, for the final fettling and publishing stage.

XMetal Author 5.1 due out soon

News from JustSystems: - A preview of XMetaL Author 5.1:

* Support for DITA 1.1 Authoring

* Enhanced Publishing

Integration with the latest versions of the DITA Open Toolkit and RenderX XEP FO engine.
Enhanced PDF output for bookmap publishing.
Extended configuration options for PDF publishing, providing better control over output without XSL-FO programming.

* Improved Transclusion Feature
For DITA conrefs and other transclusion models, XMetaL Author 5.1 has redefined the way that transclusions are handled in the editor.


XMetaL Reviewer:

" What is offered with XMetaL Reviewer is the ability to make any part of your documentation available for review via the web at any time. As this process is carried out over the web comments can be used to have a Real-Time, Instant Message style discussion between interested parties anywhere in the World. This can potentially save a vast amount of time at the end of the Documentation Process"

XML internationalization

The W3C has issued a working draft on best practices for XML internationalization. See http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-i18n-bp/#contents.

Linking Secondlife to technical communication

I've been wondering for a while how/if Secondlife could be used as a medium for technical communicators. Yesterday I received an email that illustrated one way of using it. It said:

"DITA User Meeting at Secondlife. Join us today at the DITA Chat-Meeting in Secondlife. Today Tuesday again at
9:00 - 10:00 am PT/PDT
12:00 - 1:00 pm ET/EDT
6:00 - 7:00 pm CET/CEDT

SIM Address at Secondlife: Addicted to Reality 13, 27, 24
Explore the new way of meetings."

I suppose it makes a change from a traditional conference call.

There are a number of organisations I know that are using Secondlife to market/advertise there services. Could it also, I wonder, be used to deliver training seminars?

DITA XML training course

Our DITA XML training course went live late this afternoon.

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 half a day to complete, although, of course, you can go through it at your own pace.

We have clients who have paid over £900 for us to deliver the classroom version of this course to their writers. By modifying this course to online format we've been able to slash the cost, to make it affordable to individual technical writers who see training as vital to their career. The cost of the course is, currently, £74 ex VAT ($146) per delegate, although we may revise this upwards in the future.

DITA XML Training Course

Just a quick update on our An Introduction to DITA XML - An e-learning training course. We're now in the user acceptance phase. The course, exercises and installation notes have been completed and a guinea pig will be completing the course to check we haven't missed anything. So we're almost there.