I spoke at the Congility (=”content agility”) conference, earlier in the week. It was a well run and interesting conference. Here are my post-conference reflections.
Tag: DITA
The number of companies using DITA – a story of success or failure?
It’s been seven years since DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) became an open standard. DITA, for those that don’t know, is an XML-based standard for structuring, writing, managing and publishing the type of content that you’d typically find in user guides, online Help and other technical documentation. Recently, the DITAWriter web site researched how many organisations… Read more »
How much content can you actually re-use when you move to single sourcing?
One of the challenges when considering moving to a single sourcing authoring environment, such as DITA, is determining the Return on Investment. This often boils down to a key question: how much content can you actually re-use? Organisations typically attempt to answer this question in a number of ways: Conducting a semi-manual information audit of the… Read more »
The federated Help authoring system
The federated database is a term that has been growing in popularity in recent months. According to Wikipedia: Through data abstraction, federated database systems can provide a uniform user interface, enabling users and clients to store and retrieve data in multiple noncontiguous databases Could a similar approach be used in the field of technical authoring… Read more »
The DITA XML authoring barrier for non-Technical Authors
One of the challenges for organisations moving to a new content management system for their user documentation is selecting an authoring tool that is: powerful enough, and can be used by non-Technical Authors as well as the professional Technical Authors. Many organisations want staff, such as developers, to be able to add content to the… Read more »