Contents

• Overview
• Principal URLs
  • OASIS DITA Technical Committee
  • DITA Support TCs and Subcommittees
  • DITA Specification
  • Other Online Resources for DITA
  • Key IBM Resources
  • Cover Pages DITA News Stories
• DITA Briefing Materials ("DITA Deep Dive")
• Related Technologies
  • DocBook
  • Elkera BNML
  • Topic Maps
  • Information Mapping(tm)
  • Architectural Forms
  • XML Inclusions (XInclude)
• News, Articles, Papers, Presentations, Product Overviews
  • DITA Open Toolkit Minor Release 1.1.2
  • DITA Open Toolkit Minor Release 1.1.1
  • DITA Open Toolkit Version 1.1 Major Release
  • DITA Open Toolkit 1.0.2 Minor Release Availability
  • Members Approve DITA 1.0 as OASIS Standard
  • SourceForge DITA Open Toolkit Project
  • DITA Adoption

Update 2007-08-13

On August 13, 2007, OASIS announced that its members had approved the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) version 1.1 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. DITA supports single sourcing across books, help files, training, and multimedia. It enables modular, topic-based authoring through rich, semantic markup. It incorporates special features for localization, accessibility, and robust conditional processing. Version 1.1 of DITA provides enhanced print publishing capabilities with new DITA Bookmap specialization, including extended book metadata. The standard offers more indexing capabilities with new elements for see and see-also references. It features new elements for defining structured metadata as well as the ability to add new metadata attributes through specialization. See the DITA Version 1.1 OASIS Standard references.

Overview

DITA is an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It is also an architecture for creating new information types and describing new information domains based on existing types and domains. This allows groups to create very specific, targeted document type definitions using a process called specialization, while still sharing common output transforms and design rules developed for more general types and domains.

DITA supports a unique transclusion mechanism that is validated under DTD processing rules: an element "can replace itself with the content of a like element elsewhere, either in the current topic or in a separate topic that shares the same content models. DITA's conref 'transclusion' mechanism is similar to the SGML conref mechanism, which uses an empty element as a reference to a complete element elsewhere. However, DITA requires that at least a minimal content model for the referencing element be present, and performs checks during processing to ensure that the replacement element is valid in its new context. This mechanism goes beyond standard XInclude, in that content can be incorporated only when it is equivalent: If there is a mismatch between the reusing and reused element types, the conref is not resolved. It also goes beyond standard entity reuse, in that it allows the reused content to be in a valid XML file with a DTD. The net result is that reused content gets validated at authoring time, rather than at reuse time, catching problems at their source."

Note: Michael Priestley (IBM) has provided several key documents for this DITA reference collection; his assistance in creating this document is gratefully acknowledged.

Update 2005-02-17

The OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC approved DITA 1.0 as a Committee Draft and advanced it for public review. DITA is an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It also supports specialization to create new topic types for new information domains. The review draft includes an Architectural Specification, Language Reference, XML Schemas, and DTDs. See details in the news story "OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture TC Approves DITA Version 1.0 as a Committee Draft."

Principal URLs

DITA Briefing Materials ("DITA Deep Dive")

A small collection of tutorial materials prepared for OASIS TC DITA Overview Sessions, planned for May 25, 2004 through June 2004, via teleconference. These tutorial/briefing sessions are open to the public — not just to OASIS DITA TC members. Contact Don Day and consult the TC list archives for schedule updates. Tentative schedule: Mondays June 7, 14, 21, 28 at 11:00 AM EDT.

• "DITA Deep Dive" Session #1: Tuesday, May 25, 2004. See "An Introduction to Darwin Information Typing Architecture: DITA." February 2004. IBM Corporate User Technologies. Copyright (c) 2004 IBM Corporation. 32 slides. Note: This document was used as in the 2004-05-25 presentation by Michael Priestley via teleconference; see also DITA Briefing #1 -- additional URLs.

• "DITA Deep Dive" Session #2: Tuesday, June 01, 2004, 11:00 AM EDT. Presentation materials for Briefing #2. A ZIP archive; take care to UNzip the archive with the 'create subdirectories' option enabled; this will ensure correct linking across files. See the file listing.

• "DITA Deep Dive" Session #3: Monday, June 07, 2004. 11:00 - 12:00 AM (1 hour). Live demo of DITA processing. The presentation is being offered on two streams: WebEx (courtesy Intel) and SameTime (courtesy IBM); both demo options require installation of client software. See the instructions for joining this session. See also the powerpoint presentation for Session #3: "An Introduction to DITA Processing: Exploring Aspects of the Processing Model." Summary: The DITA toolkit is a reference implementation of many of the design behaviors for DITA processing, including specialization awareness, multiple map-based views, multiple outputs, DTDs and Schemas with specialization design patterns. Planned next steps are to work on the bookmap specialization, identify any clarification needed for the model, get agreement on standard organization for use by vendors, move toward Open Source maintenance. [see now the SourceForge DITA Open Toolkit Project]

• "DITA Deep Dive" Session #4: Monday, June 14, 2004. 11:00 - 12:00 AM. Please review these slides prior to briefing #4, which will include a live demo. See also in connection with the demo: (1) the [updated 2004-10-15] presentation, "A Demonstration of DITA Specialization Showing Information Type, Domain, and Processing Specializations"; (2) the accompanying samples, suitable for unzipping in the dita13\demo directory; these materials will be useful especially if you cannot see the demo. Instructions are provided for login and accessing the Sametime or WebEx live demos. Playback: DITA Briefing 4 (Specialization) phone recording details. [Earlier 2004-06 version, now superseded by the above 2004-10-15 materials: presentation and samples]

• "DITA Deep Dive" Session #5: Monday, June 21, 2004. 11:00 - 12:00 AM. Presentation materials: (1) "Conditional Processing and Reuse: Managing Differences and Commonalities in Topics and Maps"; (2) "Conditional Processing Design." See details for the call-in telephone numbers; no live demo for this presentation. Questions [Don Day]: "Does reuse apply to anything else in DITA besides content? Are "conditional processing" and "profiling" equivalent terms? Is it possible to overuse/abuse conditional processing and conref? Can we limit this architecturally, or is tasteful usage a best practice? Does the use of conref or conditional cues consign my content to the Build paradigm, or can I defer some of that resolution to the browser? Can my customer browse XML that adapts dynamically for particular installed features?" See also "DITA XML: A Reuse by Reference Architecture for Technical Documentation," by Michael Priestley.

• "DITA Deep Dive" Session #6: Monday, June 28, 2004. 11:00 - 12:00 AM. Topic: DITA lifecycle issues (end-to-end; case studies and examples). Presenters: John Hunt (overview); Michael Priestley and France Baril (experiences with DITA). Presentation materials: (1) "The Lifecycle of DITA Content: The End-To-End Processing of DITA Content from Information Design to Output Delivery" (Michael Priestley); (2) "CEDROM-SNi's DITA-based Project: From Analysis to Delivery" (France Baril). Details for dial-in. See Questions [Don Day]: "Can DITA support incremental updates for patches or minor releases? How do I ensure interoperability with a contractor who provides a portion of my techpubs support? What minimal tools does he need in order to provide content that I can bring seamlessly into my CMS and production system?"

Related Technologies

To the extent that a "topic" is the basic DITA architectural unit, the system has some affinities to Topic Maps; to the extent that it features modular content design and optimizes content reuse, it is similar to information mapping. DITA is similar in many ways to DocBook, yet it has "broader scope, inasmuch as DITA applies to more areas than just technical manuals, and more specific scope, inasmuch as DITA applies to topic-oriented information rather than all technical manuals." References are provided below.

News, Articles, Papers, Presentations, Product Overviews

• [September 02, 2009] OASIS Webinar: "Defining DITA for Pharmaceutical Documentation." Date/Time: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 11:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT. "OASIS hosts a 30-minute webinar outlining the upcoming activities of the new DITA Pharmaceutical Content Subcommittee. This group is bringing together pharmaceutical documentation experts from all regions to define DITA topics and maps, as well as associated metadata and terminology. The output of this Committee will address good practices as well as proposed DITA specialization; all stakeholders are strongly encouraged to be represented. The webinar will provide examples of how the group's recommendations may be used to streamline the creation of documentation supporting a product for scientific and regulatory purposes throughout its lifecycle. While the actual scope and schedule will be determined by the DITA Committee, some of the early topics may include: (a) ICH Common Technical Document; (b) FDA Structured Product Labeling; (3) EU Product Information Management; (4) Clinical Trial Protocol and Study Reports. Anyone with an interest in participating in or monitoring the work of the DITA Pharmaceutical Content Subcommittee including may consider attending the Webinar, including: [i] Medical and technical writers for pharmaceutical companies, [ii] Information technology architects with specialization in content and document management, and [iii] Researchers who have expertise in the design of drug development programs..." See also the OASIS DITA Pharmaceutical Content Subcommittee: Draft Charter.

• [February 04, 2008] "JustSystems Announces DITA Maturity Model Co-Authored with IBM. Industry's First Graduated Methodology for Implementing Darwin Information Typing Architecture to be Featured in Joint Webinar." — "JustSystems, Inc., the largest independent software vendor in Japan and a worldwide leader in XML and information management technologies, today announced the availability of the DITA Maturity Model, which was co-authored with IBM and defines the industry's first graduated, step-by-step methodology for implementing Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). One of DITA's most attractive features is its support for incremental adoption. Users can start quickly and easily with DITA using a subset of its capabilities, and then add investment over time as their content strategy evolves and expands to cover more requirements and content areas. However, this continuum of adoption has also resulted in confusion, as communities at different stages of adoption claim radically different numbers for cost of migration and return on investment. Authored by DITA experts Michael Priestley of IBM Corporate User Technologies and Amber Swope of JustSystems, the DITA Maturity Model addresses this confusion by dividing DITA adoption into six levels, each with its own required investment and associated return on investment. Users can assess their own capabilities and goals relative to the model and choose the initial adoption level appropriate for their needs and schedule. The six levels of DITA adoption include: (1) Level 1: Topics. The most minimum DITA adoption requires the migration of the current XML content sources. (2) Level 2: Scalable Reuse. The major activity at this level is to break down the content in topics that are stored as individual files and use DITA maps to collect and organize the content into reusable units for assembly into specific deliverables. (3) Level 3: Specialization and Customization. Now, users expand the information architecture to be a full content model, which explicitly defines the different types of content required to meet different author and audience needs and specify how to meet these needs using structured, typed content. (4) Level 4: Automation and Integration. Once content is specialized, users can leverage their investments in semantics with automation of key processes and begin tying content together even across different specializations or authoring disciplines. (5) Level 5: Semantic Bandwidth. As DITA diversifies to occupy more roles within an organization, a cross-application, cross-silo solution that shares DITA as a common semantic currency lets groups use the toolset most appropriate for their content authoring and management needs. (6) Level 6: Universal Semantic Ecosystem. As DITA provides for scalable semantic bandwidth across content silos and applications, a new kind of semantic ecosystem emerges: Semantics that can move with content across old boundaries, wrap unstructured content, and provide validated integration with semi-structured content and managed data sources...

• [January 07, 2008] "DITA XML Introduction: Reconciling Usability and Reusability." By Michael Priestley. Online UCSC Course (20830, X400.079 BUSAD). University of California Extension, Santa Cruz. February 04, 2008 through March 21, 2008. "DITA is the 'Holy Grail of Reuse', but reuse without usability only multiplies problems. This course covers not only the basics of the DITA standard — i.e., topics, maps, and specialization — but also guidelines and best practices for the standard that help produce not simply reusable topics but usable, user-centered content that can be reconfigured quickly to meet new product, user, or media requirements. This online course consists of pre-recorded lectures and demonstrations with assignments, workshops, and discussion, covering: (1) Background to DITA: XML, topic-based authoring, and the DITA standard; (2) The DITA content types: concept, task, reference, and glossary; (3) DITA maps: how to use maps to plan your information, organize your topics, and manage links and metadata for your deliverables, as part of a task-oriented information architecture and process; (4) DITA conditional processing and content reuse; (5) DITA specialization: how to create new content types and maps using DITA's specialization architecture; (6) Futures of DITA: explore the potential of DITA in Web 2.0, enterprise content strategy, lifecycle and cross-discipline integration..." [online UCSC description]

• [November 03, 2007] "DITA for Enterprise Business Documents Subcommittee Proposal Background." By Ann Rockley and Michael Boses. November 2, 2007, Version 1.4. 6 pages. Posted to the OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC Repository and List on 2007-11-03 by Michael Boses, as a "Position Paper." See also the accompanying message from Ann Rockley and Michael Boses. Document summary: "This document presents a brief discussion of the increasing usage of DITA for a broad range of narrative business documents that has led to a proposal for a DITA Enterprise Business Documents Sub-committee. The document includes preliminary goals of the committee, and a discussion of the rationale for each goal." From the message: "Esteemed DITA TC members: In the past year, a growing number of organizations have come to believe that DITA not only provides the best basis from which to start addressing their requirements for structured authoring of narrative business documents, but that characteristics of DITA simplify the usability issues as well. The DITA standard is so compelling, that the absence of a sub-committee focus on narrative business documents has not stopped several organizations from embarking on the use of DITA for this purpose. Many of us who are currently engaged in DITA-based business document projects feel that this is an ideal time for the DITA technical committee to support the efforts of these business users with standardized approaches and experienced-based guidance. For your consideration at the next open Technical Committee agenda, we propose that the Technical Committee officially establish an Enterprise Business Document subcommittee. Attached are the name, goals, deliverables, chair, and initial membership for this proposed subcommittee. A background document has been uploaded to the OASIS site and may be accessed by interested parties" from the TC Repository. [proposal source]

• [August 13, 2007] DITA 1.1 Appproved as an OASIS Standard. Announcement 2007-08-13: "Members Approve Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) 1.1 as OASIS Standard. Avaya, Adobe, BMC Software, Boeing, Citrix Systems, Comet, Comtech Services, IBM, Intel, JustSystems, Nokia, Oracle, PTC, Sun Microsystems, US Department of Defense, and Others Collaborate on Open Standard for Content Reuse and Multi-Channel Delivery." — OASIS members have approved DITA Version 1.1 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. DITA builds content reuse into the authoring process, defining an XML architecture for designing, writing, managing, and publishing many kinds of information in print and on the Web. DITA supports single sourcing across books, help files, training, and multimedia. It enables modular, topic-based authoring through rich, semantic markup. It incorporates special features for localization, accessibility, and robust conditional processing. Version 1.1 of DITA provides enhanced print publishing capabilities with new DITA Bookmap specialization, including extended book metadata. The standard offers more indexing capabilities with new elements for "see" and "see-also" references. It features new elements for defining structured metadata as well as the ability to add new metadata attributes through specialization. Comtech Services, IBM, JustSystems, and PTC verified successful usage of DITA 1.1, in accordance with eligibility requirements for all OASIS Standards. DITA was developed under the Royalty-Free on Limited Terms Mode of the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights Policy.

• [February 21, 2007] "OAXAL: Open Architecture for XML Authoring and Localization." By Andrzej Zydron. From XML.com (February 21, 2007). Related draft, as contributed to the OASIS DITA TC, in PDF format, from Word/DOC source. "XML is now acknowledged as the best format for authoring technical documentation. Its wide support, extensible nature, separation of form and content, and ability to publish in a wide variety of output formats such as PDF, HTML, and RTF make it a natural choice. In addition, the costs associated with implementing an XML publishing solution have decreased significantly. Nevertheless, there are some clear do's and don'ts when authoring in XML, some of which are detailed in Coping with Babel, a paper from the XML 2004 conference. XML, thanks to its extensible nature and rigorous syntax, has also spawned many standards that allow the exchange of information between different systems and organizations, as well as new ways of organizing, transforming, and reusing existing assets. For publishing and translation, this has created a new way of using and exploiting existing documentation assets, known as Open Architecture for XML Authoring and Localization (OAXAL). OAXAL takes advantage of the arrival of some core XML-related standards: (1) DITA — Darwin Information Typing Architecture from OASIS; (2) xml:tm — XML-based text memory from LISA OSCAR. DITA is a very well thought-out way of introducing object-oriented concepts into document construction. It introduces the concepts of reuse and granularity into publishing within an XML vocabulary. It is having a big impact on the document publishing industry. xml:tm is also a pivotal standard that provides a unified environment within which other localization standards can be meaningfully integrated, thus providing a complete environment for OAXAL. OAXAL allows system builders to create an elegant and integrated environment for document creation and localization. The OAXAL model provides full process automation, right up to delivering matched files to the translator. Automation eliminates the costs associated with project management and manual processes. Data gets processed faster and more efficiently and without the costs associated with a traditional localization workflow..." PDF source: See the posting by Andrzej Zydron with the document title "Making Effective Use of XML for Publishing" [ZIP file, Word/DOC] and copy/ZIP, cache.

• [March 22, 2006] "OASIS Launches DITA XML.org Focus Area. New Web Site Enables Community to Share Information on DITA Publishing Standard." - "The OASIS international standards consortium today introduced the DITA XML.org Focus Area... Don Day of IBM, chair of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee: 'Interest in DITA is tremendous right now, and there is strong support in the community for a resource to share information; the DITA XML.org Focus Area combines the free expression of a wiki with stable background materials on the standard, as well as organized community postings on topical issues. Novices, experienced implementors, providers of DITA-compliant products and services, local user group members, those interested in advancing the standard-everyone will be able to make use of the site.' All DITA XML.org Focus Area pages are accessible by the public, and users are encouraged to contribute content. The site features three main sections: (1) DITA Knowledge Base, which provides a technical and educational background on the standard, as compiled by the site's Editorial Board; (2) DITA Today, which serves as a community bulletin board and directory where readers share news, events, product listings, services, case studies, testimonials, and recommendations on other useful resources; (3) DITA Wiki, which enables the public to dynamically collaborate on documents and add new pages to the site..."

• [March 20, 2006] "Managing Semantics with Content Using DITA XML." By Eric Hennum (IBM STG User Technology). Presented at the 2006 Semantic Technology Conference, March 2006. 16 slides. Discusses: (1) The need for content semantics; (2) Background about SKOS and DITA; (3) The XML implementation; (4) Lessons learned, limitations, and future directions. Abstract: "Traditional approaches to knowledge management separate the identification of semantics from the creation of content. In particular, the document collection is often created by a different team at a different time from the classification of that content. Instead of trying to bolt on the semantics after the fact, content creators can improve both knowledge management and their document content by defining and classifying the semantics as a part of the document collection. DITA is an XML standard that encourages the creation of semantically precise documents. The subjects covered by the document collection can themselves be defined as documents, making it possible to classify the subject matter of documents as hypertext links to subject documents. Rather than force content creators to migrate to unfamiliar ontological strategies, this approach gives content creators a way to define semantics naturally as a refinement on their existing information architecture. The subject definitions and classifications can be transformed by XSLT into a standard SKOS or TopicMaps representations for processing by semantic tools..." [cache]

• [February 23, 2006] Members of the DITA TC have formed an OASIS DITA Translation Subcommittee, supported by an SC mailing list. The SC proposes to draw members from the DITA and the XLIFF TCs and establish a liaison with the W3C ITS working group. Its initial goals were to: (1) Develop an effective liaison with the OASIS XLIFF technical committee and the W3C ITS working group so that the DITA TC can work together with those interested providing for the needs of the information-development community from authoring through localization to the production of final deliverables in multiple languages. (2) Establish guidelines that promote best practices for authoring, workflow, and tools that allows information to move seamlessly from original authors and editors through translators and production specialists handling the intricacies of multiple languages and cultures. (3) Add to the various specifications methods that will help vendors and service providers comply with DITA and translation-oriented standards. (4) Add a DITA to XLIFF to DITA tool set to the DITA Open Source Toolkit so that content can move seamlessly along the full information development life cycle."

• [February 14, 2006] IBM Task Modeler. On February 09, 2006, IBM announced an alphaWorks IBM Task Modeler "Eclipse-based tool for rapidly creating and analyzing models of human activity for DITA and user experience design. Task Modeler is an Eclipse-based software tool for modeling human activity as a hierarchy of tasks and related elements. An information architect can use it to design DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) maps. A usability practitioner can produce either classic HTA (Hierarchical Task Analysis) diagrams or RAG (Roles and Goals) diagrams. The tool can be used in a workshop, during a field study, or at one's desk to rapidly create, explore, analyse, and share these models. Maps and models consist of nodes and properties. Nodes describe elements such as topics and concepts or roles and goals. For example, DITA maps define nodes such as topics, tasks, concepts, and references according to the DITA standard. The RAG diagram builds an integrated view of key UCD (User-Centred Design) data such as user profiles, context of use, motivation, and behavior. Properties define details for each node. For example, DITA topic properties define elements such as audience and platform metadata, and RAG properties define aspects such as the demographics of a stakeholder role or the measurements associated with a goal. These properties can be strings, numbers, keywords, or, references to files and Web URLs. Keywords can be either user-supplied or predefined as a controlled vocabulary." Michael Priestley, IBM DITA Architect and Classification Schema PDT Lead, notes that the tool "lets you quickly create DITA maps and generate stub content for a prototype build, including support for major map structures like hierarchies (e.g., tables of contents) and relationship tables (e.g., for related links) and the base DITA topic types (concept, task, reference)." See also the FAQ document.

• [December 30, 2005] DITA Open Toolkit: RFE for Plugin Architecture. Posted to the 'dita-ot-developer@lists.sourceforge.net' list by Stephen [Yuan Peng] Zhang (Shanghai Globalization Laboratory, IBM China Software Development Lab, Shanghai). "The purpose of plugin architecture is to make the contribution to DITA-OT more easier and usable... so that every one can contribute to the toolkit and working on their customization or specialization more easily..." According to the Use Case for the plugin architecture for DITA-OT: "This use case describes how an end user can get, install, and use a plugin developed for DITA open toolkit There are two options for the plugin architecture to load the plugins. One is just like Eclipse plugin architecture: we load the plugins every time a build is invoked. The other one is like Mozilla Firefox: every time when we installed new plugin, we should start a program to install those plugin and integrate them with toolkit. Currently we decided to use the first option..." See details in the Design document. Source: see the posting and comments from Paul Prescod: "... With respect to use cases, I would like it if we could enumerate the types of plugins we expect to create. These are the ones I can think of: (1) plugin that adds a new output engine (e.g., FrameMaker, MAML, LaTeX) to the toolkit; (2) pre-processing that might integrate external information into the content (probably after topic merging); (3) post-processing that might massage output based on outputclass and other attributes; (4) plugin that adds specialization-specific overrides to a particular formatting process; (5) plugin consisting of pure style: CSS, FrameMaker template, etc..."

• [December 20, 2005] Implement a DITA Publishing Solution Without Abandoning Your Current Publishing System Investments. How IBM Started Working With DITA Without Overhauling the Entire System." By Robert Anderson (Developer, Information Development Workbench, IBM) and Erik Hennum (Information Architect, IBM). From IBM developerWorks (December 20, 2005). "DITA is a topic-oriented architecture now managed by the OASIS DITA Technical Committee. With DITA, you author content in small, independent units that you assemble into deliverables, such as online help, books, or courses. Until recently, the primary large-scale authoring format inside IBM was IBMIDDoc SGML. The IBMIDDoc DTD had been in use for over 10 years — enough time to develop large libraries and complicated processing tools. When we began the move to DITA, there were still many reasons to continue using these old tools: (1) The existing tools had been extensively tested for translation and accessibility support; (2) They were proven to work for very large books, at a time when no extremely large sets of information existed in DITA; (3) Authors were familiar with the existing processes, and would continue to use them for old books; (4) Many publishing options did not yet exist for DITA, such as transforms to README-style text or full book-like PDF. Of course, we could have written new tools for DITA that matched the function of the old system, to minimize the learning curve for authors. However, writing a full set of new tools had a number of disadvantages: it required a large up-front investment, it ignored our investment in working tools, it didn't allow us to combine old SGML and new DITA information, and most importantly, we could not start using DITA until the new tools were ready. This article highlights the pros and cons of alternative solutions we came up with during our evaluation. It also identifies the DITA solution we chose and the rationale for it, and describes the dirty technical details of that solution. The advantages of using DITA by reference are clear, but how useful is this information for companies that do not use IBMIDDoc, or even SGML? The answer is that the same approach can be applied to any SGML or XML system, with varying degrees of complexity. Any SGML or XML system should be able to add a new DITA object element to reference DITA content. In order to merge content or reuse existing tools, it is also necessary to have a conversion from DITA to the current format. Beyond that, the solution will vary based on that current format. If there is no prolog for central definitions, the transform can convert directly to nested content (no need for the root or <body> elements). Without supporting links between separately included content, there is no complex mechanism for recognizing IDs and references... The XMLObj element in IBMIDDoc shows that it is possible to move to DITA without abandoning an existing publishing system. We were able to start using DITA content with our existing books long before time permitted a full-scale migration. We created a path to old output formats that were not yet supported from DITA. All of this allowed us to use DITA content without investing in an entirely new system, years before a DITA-based system was ready..."

• [December 20, 2005] Provisional entry: Andrzej Zydron (XML-INTL) [Vita]. Guest Presenter on localization at DITA TC Meeting 2005-12-20. (1) Compatability of DITA Design Priciples with Localization Requirements; (2) DITA Best Practices for Localization; (3) DITA and xml:tm. See the summary and source in the posting DITA and Localization Presentations and in the related message from Don Day, DITA translation background. Sources: source Compatability; source BestPractices; source XML:tm.

• [November 15, 2005] "SiberLogic Announces SiberSafe DITA Edition. Semantic Knowledge Modeling And Robust, Feature-Rich XML CMS Offer Outstanding Functionality to DITA Documentation Teams." - "SiberLogic, an established provider of innovative XML content technology, and XML 2005 Gold Sponsor, today announces the DITA Edition of its flagship content management system, SiberSafe — the only DITA solution on the market today that combines semantic knowledge modeling with a robust, feature-rich CMS... Semantic knowledge modeling is ideal for DITA's topic-based approach to content development. Using SiberSafe Visual Modeler, knowledge is contributed directly into the semantic model by the subject matter expert, leaving no possibility of factual misinterpretation. The user interface is optimized for DITA-compliant topics and components, and can be pre-populated with concepts, tasks, and references that support individual specialization requirements. This shields the SME from the complexities of DITA whilst ensuring precise content development planning and production. Information can be incrementally added to the semantic model as it becomes available during the product development lifecycle, so there is no need to wait until all information is available before starting the modeling process... SiberSafe streamlines fundamental processes such as version and workflow control, collaborative authoring and review, translation management, and more. Content can be authored both online and offline using a variety of authoring tools, including ready-made integrations with Blast Radius XMetaL, Arbortext Epic, and Adobe FrameMaker 7.2, and output to a variety of different formats, including IETP/IETM, SCORM, PDF, HTML, and PowerPoint, for delivery on paper, CD-ROM, or online. SiberSafe supports predefined templates for the easy creation of topics and topic maps that conform to your DITA specialization, and enables fragment-level management of complex topic maps or complex hierarchical topics..."

• [November 04, 2005] "Get Ready for DITA: Bypass Four Costly Roadblocks." An Innodata Isogen White Paper. October 2005. 10 pages. Also available in PDF format. "The emergence of Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) as a general-purpose XML schema for technical documentation represents a significant step forward and opportunity for organizations that create extensive amounts of technical documentation and other related content. DITA offers organizations a ready means for structuring product-support content and the rapid adoption of DITA by XML technology vendors provides a number of options for implementing DITA productively... While there are many compelling reasons to adopt DITA for developing and structuring product-support content, one of the most interesting aspects of DITA is specialization. Information developers can use specialization to customize the core DITA schema; this way, new information types can be introduced to a DITA application by extending the current application and maintaining core tools, processors and data structures. This paper discusses DITA in general — its background, current status, and applicability for product-support content and its ability to support this next step forward in the widespread adoption of XML. But the key thrust of the paper is the significance of specialization, and what the ability to develop DITA specializations means for organizations. The authors also highlight four 'roadblocks to success' with any DITA implementation. Failure to at least consider the implications of these roadblocks could lead to project delays and cost overruns, which in the long run would erode the cost and time savings of deploying DITA..." See also the Innodata Isogen DITA Resources.

• [November 03, 2005] DITA Open Toolkit 1.1.2. Announcement from Don R. Day and Li Lian. "DITA Open Toolkit Minor Release 1.1.2 is a maintenance release of the DITA Open Toolkit that fixes defects and makes patches based on release 1.1.1. Thanks to all who contributed fixes and new material for this release; one special thing to look for: Jennifer Linton has created a new installation document that you should try out — see the built versions in DITA-OT1.1.2/doc/installguide of the 1.1.2 download... Recently we have seen more and more users download the toolkit, use it and report bugs. We are now asking for your help to be part of the development team and join the development activity by taking on bug fixes, providing patches, offering feature implementation, and more..."

• [October 22, 2005] Eliot Kimber: How Did You Decide Between DocBook, DITA, or Custom DTDs? October 12, 2005. Linda L. Talboo asked on the Adepters list and on the Yahoo!Groups 'dita-users' list: "We are in the planning stages of switching to Arbortext Editor (formerly Epic Editor). Our current dilemma is whether to use DocBook, DITA, or custom DTDs. A major consideration is the ability to create books in Arbortext. We would need to create table of contents, indexes, and glossaries. We are leaning towards using DITA DTDs, because we eventually plan to feed information into a Content Management System, and DITA seems to be much better at 'chunking' than DocBook. Has any user had experience with DITA, books, and Arbortext? What factors influenced your decision to use DocBook, DITA or custom DTDs?" Eliot Kimber composed a response: "A custom document type should, of course, give you the best fit to your specific requirements (although its easy enough to go wrong there). But of course the startup cost is high. While I like nothing more than to do ground-up engineering of document types and the systems that support them, it's still a fact that both DocBook and DITA reflect years of collective wisdom and practice in using SGML and XML for technical documentation and therefore using them helps to minimize the risk that your system will go horribly wrong. While both have their warts, they're both clearly good enough for a wide range of applications and both are designed to be adapted to local requirements... [much text deleted]... The advantage of starting with a DocBook or DITA base instead of from scratch is that the initial cost of entry is much lower — you can start doing something even if it's not optimal with very little investment. However, to produce a complete production system that is optimized for your specific requirements and business processes, you will eventually spend about as much as you would have with a from-scratch system (remember the 80/20 rule always holds). As for whether to start with DocBook or DITA, my standard guidance is: (1) If you need to get started immediately, want to initially invest as close to zero as you can, and your primary task is to produce typical technical manuals, use DocBook. (2) If you have any requirement for re-use, specialization, or modular delivery AND you can afford a little up-front investment in analysis, specialization, and tool development, then use DITA..."

• [October 22, 2005] "DITA for DocBook: Implementing the Darwin Information Typing Architecture for DocBook." By Norm Walsh. Blog. Volume 8, Issue 136 (21-October-2005). "...DocBook and DITA are competitors, at least to the extent that both are aimed at the technical documentation market. I think DITA can point to four technical differences that are arguably features in its favor: (1) A topic-oriented authoring paradigm. (2) A cross-referencing scheme that's more practical than XML's flat ID space. (3) SGML's conref, reinvented; (4) An extensibility model based on specialization... DocBook's legacy is certainly big, linear documents: it even has the word 'book' in it's name. But there's nothing that prevents you from writing modern, topic-oriented, highly modular documentation in DocBook. Nothing except, perhaps, the emotional weight of the tag names... With a couple of hours of hacking [using RELAX NG + XSLT], I've implemented on top of DocBook the four key features of DITA that I could identify... In doing so, I've attempted to remain true to the spirit of DocBook, so my content models aren't exactly the same as the DITA models, but I think the analogies are sound. That means the choice of which vocabulary to use, DocBook or DITA, comes down simply to the actual terms in the vocabulary, the elements and attributes provided, their semantics, and their relationships to each other... My experiment to implement DITA on top of DocBook includes: (1) A schema (RNG or RNC) — The schema is a DocBook 5.0 extension that defines a new top-level element, the <topic>. In the interest of modelling DITA, it also defines a <task> with the same general structure as a DITA task, a <concept>, and a <reference> as specializations of <topic>. (2) A stylesheet — The stylesheet is a customization of the DocBook XSLT2 Stylesheets. It handles the semantics of the simple map files I outlined above, supports conref, and implements the DITA fragment identifier syntax. I incorporated the schema support into the base stylesheets. (3) An example — My example is just a toy, but it has several parts: a map, a 'main' topic, a 'subordinate' topic, and a task..."

• [October 18, 2005] "Subject Classification with DITA and SKOS. Managing Formal Subjects." By Robert Anderson (Developer, Information Development Workbench, IBM), Erik Hennum (Information Architect, IBM), and Colin Bird (Information Architect, IBM). From IBM developerWorks (October 18, 2005). "With the approach outlined in this article, you can take advantage of the technologies of the Semantic Web for improved search, integration, and other processing. Instead of starting from scratch, however, you can build on standard topic-oriented strategies for authoring and processing content... In a topic-oriented architecture such as DITA, content is authored in small, independent units that are assembled to provide help systems, books, courses, and other deliverables. Each unit of information answers a single question for a specific purpose. That is, each topic has specific, independent subject matter — the very reason that these units of information are called topics. For instance, one topic might describe the format of a user definition file on a Web site while another topic explains the principles of Web site security and a third topic lays out the procedure for setting up Web site logins. Because each topic has a specific meaning, DITA topics are tailor-made for semantic processing. However, current semantic processors can't read the text of a topic to find out what it means. What's missing is a formal declaration of the topic's subject matter that a semantic processor can understand — like the address on an envelope that allows mail sorters to route the contents to the appropriate destination. Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) provides a standard for indicating the subject matter of content. SKOS lets you define the subjects for a particular subject matter area (organizing these subjects as a taxonomy if desired) and then classify each piece of content to indicate its subject. For instance, using SKOS, you could define configuration and security as subjects, and classify the three example topics that relate to those subjects so that users could browse the subjects to find the content regardless of whether the words 'configuration' or 'security' actually appear in the text. SKOS is expressed with Resource Description Framework (RDF), the fundamental language of the Semantic Web. However, SKOS provides a higher-level language that's designed for readable content. SKOS has benefited from broad perspectives, including those of experts in OWL/RDF, TopicMaps, ontology, and library science. In the spectrum of standards, SKOS contributes by bridging the gap between traditional indexing and formal ontologies for the Semantic Web. Thus, DITA has a natural fit with SKOS in solutions where DITA topics are classified with subjects that are expressed in SKOS for runtime processing..."

• [October 18, 2005] "In Focus: DITA Lets Tech Publishers 'Eat Their Cake'." By Bill Trippe. From Intelligent Enterprise (October 18, 2005). "The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is finally pushing aside roadblocks that have stood in the way of adopting XML-based publishing. DITA is an XML-based architecture for authoring and producing technical content that was approved as an OASIS standard in May [2005]. Although new standards usually gain support quite slowly, DITA is taking off. Software companies are leading the way by using the standard for their own internal needs. Adopting DITA does not eliminate the necessary first step of modeling content for XML, but it does anticipate the need for custom content models with a method called specialization. Consultants and experienced users admit that although 'out-of-the-box' DITA is a great start, many organizations will end up specializing DITA for their own uses. Both Adobe and Autodesk rely on specialized versions of DITA, and other adopters will likely need to do the same... 'DITA's specialization mechanism can be seen as the single most important part of DITA because it allows for the controlled, managed use of XML for technical documentation that enterprises have never had before,' says industry veteran Eliot Kimber, senior consulting engineer at Hackensack, N.J.-based Innodata Isogen. 'By definition, no generic solution can satisfy all the detailed requirements of any enterprise. At the same time, few but the largest enterprises want to bear the cost of implementing a custom solution entirely from scratch given the existence of generic solutions like DocBook'..."

• [October 15, 2005] Serious DITA Gear. From cafépress and OASIS. Examples: DITA Tote Bag ($12.99), DITA Teddy Bear ($12.99), DITA BBQ Apron ($14.99), DITA Mousepad ($10.99), DITA Boxer Shorts ($12.99), DITA Baseball Jersey ($16.99), DITA Hooded Sweatshirt ($24.99), DITA Long Sleeve T-Shirt ($18.99), DITA Sweatshirt ($20.99), DITA Women's Raglan Hoodie ($26.99), DITA Women's Tracksuit ($39.99), DITA Ash Grey T-Shirt ($14.99), DITA Golf Shirt ($16.99), DITA Green T-Shirt ($14.99), DITA Ringer T-Shirt ($14.99), DITA Men's Sleeveless Tee $14.99), DITA Jr. Ringer T-Shirt ($16.99), DITA Value T-shirt ($8.99), DITA White T-Shirt ($13.99), DITA Women's Pink T-Shirt ($14.99), DITA Women's Tank Top ($14.99), DITA Yellow T-Shirt ($14.99).

• [October 12, 2005] "Going DITA." By Constantine Hondros. From O'Reilly Weblogs (October 12, 2005). "DITA is an XML architecture for authoring and publishing topic-based content, typically technical documentation. The brainchild of IBM, where it is used internally for many documentation projects, DITA is now an open-source standard under the aegis of OASIS. A reference implementation containing a toolkit is available from Sourceforge. So what's all the fuss about? While single-source XML publishing has benefits that are well lauded — for example, content reuse and multi- channel publishing — implementing it can be an absolute battle for an organisation. A large project starting from scratch needs major upfront development: extensive information analysis; the development of company-specific DTDs, and significant programming to create publishing processes. Not to mention the effort of migrating legacy content to the new formats, installing new editing software, training users to think in XML, and possibly paying for a content management system. The real beauty of DITA — and what turns DITA into an XML architecture rather than application — is the ability to specialise core topic-types into new document classes that more closely encapsulate a given information domain. DITA prescribes a method for doing this that lets your new document classes retain compatibility with existing XSLT transforms. This is seriously useful stuff..."

• [September 26, 2005] "Blast Radius Helps Organizations Leap Barriers to XML Adoption with Launch of XMetaL Author DITA Edition. Market Primed for the World's First DITA-based XML Authoring Solution." - "Blast Radius, the world leader in XML content creation and collaboration solutions, today unveiled XMetaL Author DITA Edition, the first XML application built exclusively for natively authoring and publishing content using the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). Featuring a rich topic-oriented authoring environment, XMetaL Author DITA Edition combines the power and productivity of XMetaL Author with new DITA-specific capabilities, enabling authors to deliver XML content with greater ease and speed than ever before. 'The DITA industry-standard model for creating topic-based XML content moves away from the book paradigm to encourage effective content reuse and dynamic online delivery capabilities,' said David Antila, Principal, Advisory Services, Collaborative Strategies. 'Products such as XMetaL that support the DITA standard will positively impact collaborative authoring capabilities and enhance the re-use of content, ultimately resulting in increased productivity within an organization.' DITA's flexible, topic-oriented approach maps well to modern information delivery models, particularly those in the high tech industry. For example, Sybase, a globally-focused high tech company, plans to use XMetaL Author DITA Edition to meet its DITA needs. XMetaL Author DITA Edition includes the following DITA-specific capabilities: (1) Visual Map Editing: A powerful visual map editor allows users to quickly organize topics into DITA maps. (2) Natural Structured Authoring: An interface and environment that reduces complex and time-consuming structured authoring chores to a series of simple steps that let users concentrate on writing high quality content. (3) Reusable Components: Built-in support for topic reuse in the DITA Map Editor and more granular content reuse through inline content references (conrefs), dramatically reduces redundancy and writing effort, while improving content consistency and quality. (4) Single-Source Publishing: The DITA Edition tightly integrates with the open source DITA Open Toolkit to let users write content once and output it to multiple publishing formats..."

• [September 21, 2005] DITA Open Toolkit 1.1.1. DITA Open Toolkit minor release 1.1.1 became available for download as of September 20, 2005. Release 1.1.1 is a maintenance release that fixes defects and makes patches based on release 1.1. In previous releases, the jar file for the command line invoker was always referenced by the then-current version number, but this meant our having to change the documentation and several internal references for each new release. For patch 1284023, we are changing the name of the jar lib file from dost1.0.jar back to dost.jar because we believe we need to keep the jar file name consistent through various releases. If you have coded a versioned call to dost.jar in any build scripts (versus the preferable method of using Ant build targets for repeatble processing), you might need to change that reference one last time... The DITA Open Toolkit bugs and patches can be found in the SourceForge trackers for Bugs and Patches..." Posted by Don Day to the 'dita-users@yahoogroups.com' list, "DITA Open Toolkit minor release 1.1.1 (bugs and patches) available." See also the release note.

• [September 14, 2005] "FrameMaker 7.2 and DITA." By Bill Trippe. From Gilbane Report Blog (September 14, 2005). FrameMaker 7.2 was announced this week... The product comes with a starter application for DITA. This is also welcome news, as there is a groundswell of support for DITA, and an independent group had been working on a separate FrameMaker application for DITA. This gives FrameMaker users a DITA application supported by Adobe. Moreover, the FrameMaker DITA application reflects a great deal of work Adobe had done in-house using FrameMaker to produce the documentation set for Adobe Creative Suite 2. [V7.2] has some important new structural features (schema, XSLT), and the DITA application is timely and useful to a growing number of potential users. The strength of this release should quiet some of the feelings among users that Adobe is not fully committed to FrameMaker."

• [August 31, 2005] "DITA OT 1.1 Under Both CPL and ASL." "DITA Open toolkit begins to publish the source and binary code under both Common Public License and Apache license 2.0 from DITA OT release 1.1. If you are including the toolkit in a commercial package or integrating the toolkit into a CPL-licensed project, you might prefer the CPL version. If you are integrating the toolkit into an Apache-license project, you might prefer the ASL license..."

• [August 18, 2005] DITA Open Toolkit 1.1. The DITA Open Toolkit 1.1 release was announced on August 18, 2005. "Release 1.1 is a major release to add new functionality, satisfy new requirements, make some feature enhancements, and fix bugs identified since release 1.0.2. Release 1.1 provides a reference implementation for the new OASIS DITA 1.0 standard for DITA DTDs and Schemas. Release 1.1 also contains a new Eclipse transformation that produces as output a version of DITA XML that can be dynamically rendered in Eclipse Help System. However, this output cannot be used without a special made Eclipse content provider on the Eclipse Help System side. According to the Release notes, the DITA Open Toolkit 1.1 now: (1) provides transformation to troff; troff output looks like Linux 'man page' output; (2) offers XML catalog support: an XML catalog, which can consist of several catalog entry files, is a logical structure that describes mapping information between public IDs and URLs of DTD files; a catalog entry file is an XML file that includes a group of catalog entries; (3) has Topicref referring to a nested topic: the href attribute of the topicref is extended to quote a nested topic in a DITA file; (4) provides globalization support, with support for over 20 popular languages within the content of DITA files; it also provides a translation function for DITA keywords to over 20 languages; currently this globalization support applies fully to Eclipse Help and XHTML transformations, and partially applies to other transformations; (5) offers new accessibility support — now partially applies to PDF and XHTML transformations; (6) includes Eclipse Content Provider Support; (7) provides index information in output: the output of HTML Help and Java Help transformations contains index information; (8) provides a Mapref function: Mapref refers to a special usage of the topicref element as a reference to another ditamap file; this allows you to manage the overall ditamap file more easily; (9) provides Table of Contents generation for Eclipse Help transformation; (10) has helpset generation for Java Help transformation; (11) supports new parameters in Java commands [e.g., /indexshow, /outext, /copycss, /xsl, /tempdir ]; (12) supports new parameters in Ant scripts [e.g., args.indexshow, args.outext, args.copycss, args.xsl, dita.temp.dir].

• [August 14, 2005] Apache Derby: DITA-Sourced Documentation. "The Apache Derby Project develops open source database technology that is: pure Java, easy to use, small footprint, standards based, and secure. Database technology is defined as software that processes data related requests from applications. Data requests include data definition, data modification and data retrieval. Database GUI tooling and IDEs are not developed by the Derby project. Derby technology is written in Java to take advantage of Java's write once, run anywhere promise. Java platforms such as OSGi, J2ME, J2SE and J2EE are supported as appropriate... Currently each Derby manual is sourced in an XML implementation called the Darwin Information Typing Architecture, or DITA. The original HTML source for the Derby documenation was converted to DITA to create an easy solution for requirements such as creating PDF outputs or single HTML files for each manual. The 'Apache Derby: DITA-sourced documentation' document "lists the software required to convert the DITA-sourced documentation into HTML or PDF, and describes how to convert the DITA source to the desired outputs. These instructions currently describe how to use an Ant build file with the DITA Toolkit to create output."

• [August 09, 2005] "An XML-Based Information Architecture for Learning Content, Part 2: A DITA Content Pilot. Use DITA XML to Develop Reusable Learning Content." By John P. Hunt (DITA Learning Architect, IBM) and Robert Bernard (DB2 Training Developer, IBM). From IBM developerWorks (August 09, 2005). ['With DITA XML extensions, develop reusable learning content in this an example based on pilot content from an IBM DB2 training course.'] "The first article in this series defined a set of DITA topic types and other extensions that provide a framework for developing an XML content model for authoring and delivering learning content. We identified key phases in the DITA end-to-end process model for developing and delivering learning content, including: (1) Identify and model learning objectives and goals (2) Organize objectives into lessons and modules (3) Identify existing topics and develop new topic-based content that supports the objectives (4) Develop topic content for labs, exercises, and assessments, as appropriate (5) Write overviews and summaries for each objective and the overall course (6) Structure the topics for delivery in a particular course with a map (7) Use XSLT to process the map and topics for the particular deliverable In this article, we describe how we applied this DITA process model for learning to a case study course using content from an existing course on the IBM DB2 Query Monitor. This course was originally developed for delivery as instructor-led training (ILT), with content provided in the form of instructor slides, an instructor guide (printed PDF), and a student guide (printed PDF)... This pilot project provides an initial reference point for using DITA XML to support best practices in developing and delivering learning content. We've only just begun: We need to do much deeper work against richer and more diverse learning content to further validate, refine, and extend the design and process framework outlined here. Specifically, we plan to extend our explorations along the following lines: bring more focus on specific reuse and repurposing of educational content; convert more robust courses into DITA; develop targeted output transforms that are specific to learning deliverables needed for instructor-led training; extend DITA map specializations to include course-level and unit-level mapping; develop map processing to support delivery to a SCORM-compliant manifest and content package; continue refining the learning topic types, in response to specific content requirements that arise in actual course content." See also: DITA Open Toolkit (SourceForge).

• [August 05, 2005] "An XML-Based Information Architecture for Learning Content, Part 1: A DITA Specialization Design. Use DITA XML to Develop Reusable Learning Content." By John P. Hunt (DITA Learning Architect, IBM) and Robert Bernard (DB2 Training Developer, IBM). From IBM developerWorks (August 05, 2005). ['Use topic-based DITA XML to provide the basis for developing an information architecture for single-sourced XML learning content.'] Can topic-based DITA XML provide the basis for developing an information architecture for single-sourced XML learning content? The ability to have a standard definition for educational information is appealing because it allows you to: Minimize duplicate effort - reuse; Use material from alternate sources - repurpose; Supply course topics to alternate deliverables - repurpose; Build to company-wide standardized methods; Create custom courses quickly. This article builds directly on the rich background about reusable content and e-learning delivery in the learning and training fields. Here in Part 1, the authors posit a set of extensions to DITA XML that provide the starting point for a unifying content model for learning. Several industry trends in technical communication and technical training have converged over the past several years, all with the goal of fostering and capitalizing on the value of reusable content. These include: Reusable learning objects (RLOs); the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) standard for Web-based e-learning; the Darwin Information Typing Architecture standard for XML-based content. This article offers some background on reusable learning objects and e-learning, and then proposes a high-level design for a unifying content model for learning based on the DITA XML content standard. Topic-based DITA XML provides essential ingredients for developing reusable learning content. The DITA specialization architecture enables you to develop new DITA topic types that support learning content. With DITA maps, you can define a design pattern that ties these topics together into an overall information architecture for learning content. Part 2 of this series will show how the IBM DB2 team applied this design and the overall DITA process model for designing, developing, and delivering content to an actual DB2 training course. Part 2 will also include a download with the DITA specialization schemas and sample content files, for use with the DITA Open Toolkit..."

• [July 26, 2005] "Analysis: DITA Cuts the Cost of Content Reuse." By Doug Henschen. From Intelligent Enterprise, Content Management (July 26, 2005). "Switching to XML-based management for multichannel content reuse brings long-term savings, but in the short term it can be an expensive and time-consuming journey akin to building a house from scratch using a pile of lumber. Getting there using the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is more like building with prefabricated modular components that can be quickly assembled into a suitable structure. This analogy, offered up by Frances Gambino, director of documentation services at Information Builders Inc., is typical of the user feedback building around DITA, an open XML-based architecture for planning, authoring, managing and publishing technical content in print and on the Web. Developed by IBM and recently approved as a standard by OASIS, DITA promises huge savings for any organization that publishes user manuals, maintenance documentation, catalogs and other content for Web and print publication. Information Builders adopted DITA as its standard for documentation more than a year ago. 'Many of our software products share components, so we might have the same chapter in two or three different software manuals,' says Gambino. 'DITA takes a topic-based approach, so we can share chapters, subsections and paragraphs in two or more manuals.' In contrast to older print-oriented standards such as DocBook, DITA was developed specifically to promote multiformat reuse, including Web-based formats such as help menus and knowledgebases typically organized by topic. DITA is also hierarchical and includes built-in support for industry- and company-specific customization (or 'specialization,' in DITA parlance), so it's easy to bring new content into existing DITA-based document type definitions (DTDs). 'Companies often spend tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars developing custom DTDs, yet they often turn out to be inflexible and costly to maintain,' says consultant JoAnn Hackos of Comtech Services. 'DITA promises enormous cost savings because it provides a ready-made set of DTDs that offers all the advantages of a standard.' In a merger scenario, for example, Hackos says two companies embracing DITA would have a much easier time merging information by exploiting the standard's hierarchies and specialization features..."

• [July 23, 2005] "A Unified Type Hierarchy for Discourse: A Potential Direction for DITA 2." By Erik Hennum (IBM) Presented at Extreme Markup Languages 2005. August 2005. Type hierarchies have had great success in the Object-Oriented Design, ontology, and other areas. For instance, an API for UI programming often defines a general UI component that serves as the base type for specialized UI components such as a button, list, or text box. Some benefits of defining a type hierarchy: shared design, shared processing, easier understanding, interoperability, composability(an instance of a specialized type anywhere that allows an instance of the general type; this approach, called polymorphism in object-oriented systems, allows for design and processing flexibility without compromising the validity of designs). A formal type hierarchy can realize similar benefits for discourse. By discourse, this paper means a discussion with sequential flow whose content is structured and classified by constructs such as paragraphs, tips, phrases, product names, and so on. These structuring and classifying constructs can be considered types defined in a markup languages. Thus, a formal type hierarchy establishes relationships between more general and more specialized constructs. For instance, a product name might be considered a special kindof phrase. Overall, a set of information conforming to a formal type hierarchy would be composed of discourse objects (each of which retains its type integrity) as opposed to an indefinite mix of namespaced content. This paper proposes a strategy for building on the existing DITA type mechanisms to provide a more flexible type hierarchy. In particular, the paper argues the benefits of a unified type hierarchy, the importance of containment changes for specialization of discourse, and the need to decouple the declaration of type relationships from the schema declarations that validate the XML expression of those types. A number of initiatives and investigations are relevant to discourse typing: (1) Ontological models, which have a standard representation in the Web Ontology Language; (2) Architectural Forms; (3) DocBook and TEI solutions using RelaxNG; (4) The Datatype Library Language (DTLL) initiative championed by Jeni Tennison; (5) The Markup Semantics initiative of the BECHAMEL project; (6) The Secondary Structuring initiative; (7) The Schematron notion of abstract patterns; (8) Object Oriented Design's well-defined strategy for type specialization. We plan to submit this strategy for the consideration of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee. Discussion and refinement of the strategy by interested parties there and generally is welcome and important..." Also in PDF [cache].

• [June 07, 2005] Announcement: DITA Open Toolkit 1.0.2 Minor Release Availability. Announcing a minor release 1.0.2 of the DITA Open Toolkit is now available from its project page. "The enhancements mainly make the package easier to integrate into existing production systems, but the command line interface in particular is in response to user feedback from recent conferences and workshops, requesting simpler access to processing features for non-programmer users and evaluators... The release contains the following fixed bugs and Requests For Enhancement (RFEs): (1) SF Bug 1181950: format attribute should be set to 'dita' for dita topic; (2) SF Patch 1176909: Add template for getting image URI; (3) SF RFE 1183487: Document the usage of footer property; (4) SF RFE 1198847: command line interface support; (5) SF RFE 1198850: architecture document update; (6) SF RFE 1200410: need explanation for dita.list; (7) SF RFE 1201175: XML catalog support..."

• [June 01, 2005] "Members Approve DITA as OASIS Standard. Arbortext, BMC Software, IBM, Idiom, Innodata Isogen, Intel, Nokia, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, the U.S. Department of Defense, and Others Define XML Architecture for Publishing." - "OASIS, the international e-business standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) version 1.0 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. DITA defines an XML architecture for designing, writing, managing, and publishing many kinds of information in print and on the Web. DITA consists of a set of design principles for creating 'information-typed' modules at a topic level. DITA enables organizations to deliver content as closely as possible to the point-of-use, making it ideal for applications such as integrated help systems, web sites, and how-to instruction pages. DITA's topic-oriented content can be used to exploit new features or delivery channels as they become available. 'DITA has grown well beyond its initial focus on technical documentation and user assistance,' noted Don Day of IBM, chair of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee. 'DITA's extensible architecture makes it ideal for content definition across the business — from marketing communications to development specifications and artifacts, from company policies and procedures to news articles — the potential is tremendous. What's more, industry sectors, such as pharmaceutical, semiconductor, and telecommunications, have the power to standardize on DITA subject-matter vocabularies within their communities.' 'DITA is a testament to the benefits of bringing an entire community together to develop an open standard,' said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. 'DITA was advanced by users of documentation, such as BMC, IBM, Intel, Nokia, Oracle, Sun, and the U.S. Department of Defense, working with product vendors like Arbortext and Idiom, with input from consulting firms such as Innodata Isogen and others. A variety of perspectives on software development, application implementation, open source tools, training, and localization were incorporated into the open process. The result is that the DITA OASIS Standard delivers an end-to-end solution that meets the needs of the market'..." See the bibliographic references.

• [May 31, 2005] "Structured Authoring in Wikis: The Convergence of Structure and Chaos." By Paul Prescod (Blast Radius XMetaL). Presentation at XTech 2005 [XML Europe Conference], May 24-27, 2005. We view wikis as key examples of a document-contextual collaboration paradigm that we call DocumentSpaces. Nevertheless, wikis are by no means perfect. They tend to have a very basic structure of HTML files joined by simple one-way links. More advanced structured markup concepts are often missing. Examples include documents composed of other documents, bidirectional links, typed links and annotation overlays. We propose that by adding XML concepts to wikis they can become substantially more powerful and ubiquitous. This paper describes how to add XML structure to wikis in order to more fully realize the DocumentSpaces vision... Every wiki document is inherently an addressable, unified collaborative space: a DocumentSpace. The wiki itself is a collection of these spaces. Therefore a wiki is a natural repository for the rich collaborative spaces that Blast Radius is incorporating into its products like XMetaL Author and XMetaL Reviewer. We are currently working with a few visionary customers and partners to integrate our collaboration technologies into their wiki platforms of choice. We believe that by combining rich XML (DITA) structure, collaborative DocumentSpaces and wikis, we can help organizations break down the barriers that prevent them from achieving cross-departmental collaboration. We hope that this will allow these organizations to deliver more interesting products to market more quickly and efficiently..."

• [May 31, 2005] "DITA: Getting Started." By Christian Kravogel (SeicoDyne GmbH) and Boris Horner (Horner Project). Presentation at XTech 2005 [XML Europe Conference], May 24-27, 2005. "This presentation addresses a low-effort-required solution for users looking to take a step into XML for their technical documentation. The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and its associated public toolkit provide you with the DTDs, stylesheets and other tools you require to make your steps into XML. But DITA is much more. The DITA specialization process gives you the ability to easily adapt DITA to your company requirements to provide value for various document types. DITA is integrated into and actively supported by many state-of-the-art tools commonly known in the XML world like EPIC, XMLSpy, Serna, WorldServer OpenTopic, Content Mapper and many others to come. If you are involved in a project to introduce XML, a new CMS, or in general a new authoring environment, you will face many time and budget consuming issues and challenges — if there is anything cool and you get it for free, then take it. With DITA you will be part of a community, there are already many people around using DITA based solutions..."

• [April 20, 2005] "Using DITA for Information Architecture." By Michael Priestley (IBM User Technologies). Presented at WritersUA 2005 Conference [Thirteenth Annual WritersUA Conference, March 20-23, 2005, Tropicana Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA]. 39 slides. See the abstract. "DITA is an architecture for the design, development, and publication of technical information. The role of the information architect in this process is explicitly supported by DITA through the use of DITA map documents, which store the information architecture for an information set, and allow the information architect to define task flows, support relationships, and conceptual hierarchies across complex information sets. The information architecture in DITA is not a throw-away design document: it is a living part of the information set. It not only defines requirements on the content but also manages navigation, related links, and metadata, and is used to select and control how topics are built into output deliverables such as helpsets, Web sites, and PDF documents. Demonstrations will include previews of map functionality not yet available in the DITA public toolkit. Covers: About DITA maps; About DITA map structures and attributes; How to create a taskflow; How to identify supporting concepts and reference information; How to develop a conceptual hierarchy; How to integrate information types into a navigation hierarchy; How to scale your information architecture from components to products and solutions." Includes an example on Buying Items (Finding items, Evaluating items, Placing bids, Paying for items); see the DITA "Buying Sample" ZIP file; unzip this package into the SourceForge DITA-OT toolkit directory, then build htmlhelp by calling 'ant -f ant/ww_htmlhelp.xml'.

• [April 20, 2005] "Specializing with DITA." By Michael Priestley and Erik Hennum. Presented at the 7th Annual Content Management Strategies Conference, which featured a new DITA track (Loews Annapolis Hotel, Annapolis, Maryland, April 11-13, 2005). 22 slides. "This presentation introduces specialization, provides a brief demonstration of how DITA specialization works on a technical level, and then describes how specialization can fit into a larger process within an organization to accommodate ongoing and distributed development of specializations across varied subject areas." Covers: Introduction to specialization, demonstration of specialization, and community-developed specializations. Benefits of specialization: (1) No need to reinvent the base vocabulary; (2) No impact from other designs that customize for different purposes; (3) Interoperability at the base type; (4) Reusable type hierarchies: share understanding of information across groups, saving time and presenting a consistent picture to customers; (5) Output tailored to customers and information; (6) Consistency; (7) Learning support for new writers; (8) Explicit support of different product architectural requirements.

• [April 20, 2005] "Scenario-Based Information Development with DITA." By Michael Priestley (IBM). Presented at the 7th Annual Content Management Strategies Conference, which featured a new DITA track (Loews Annapolis Hotel, Annapolis, Maryland, April 11-13, 2005). 26 slides. "This presentation describes a scenario-based approach to developing information, and the ways in which DITA can be used to support that approach using DITA maps and DITA topic types. This discussion highlights what we did right, and improvements that we need to consider in the future for both product updates and new product development." Stages in scenario-based information development: Develop understanding; Develop architecture; Develop content; Rinse and repeat. User roles and goals drive scenarios. Scenarios drive task flows and supporting material. Task flows drive content. Testable at each step: tutorials, prototypes, Betas. Result: user focused. See also the DITA "Buying Sample" ZIP file; unzip this package into the SourceForge DITA-OT toolkit directory, then build htmlhelp by calling 'ant -f ant/ww_htmlhelp.xml'.

• [April 20, 2005] "How Global Companies can Close the Globalization Gap DITA." By Bill Rabkin (WorldServer Product Evangelist, Idiom Technologies). Presented at the Seventh Annual Content Management Strategies Conference, which featured a new DITA track (Loews Annapolis Hotel, Annapolis, Maryland, April 11-13, 2005). 13 pages/slides. "In his presentation, Mr. Rabkin looks at the business implications of using DITA in the context of the global content lifecycle. Using real-world examples, he discusses the acceleration of time-to-market, improving content quality, and reducing costs; he presents his audience with practical advice and insights." [also in .PPT format; compare "DITA: Globalize your On Demand Business."]

• [April 20, 2005] "Migrating from HTML to DITA." By Amber Swope and Hadar Hawk (IBM Corporation). Presented at the Seventh Annual Content Management Strategies Conference, which featured a new DITA track (Loews Annapolis Hotel, Annapolis, Maryland, April 11-13, 2005). "The benefits of XML, such as the separation of content and structure, structured format, and content reuse, are attractive to information teams. However, the prospect of migrating substantial numbers of topics from HTML to DITA can seem daunting and expensive. This presentation walks through the project steps in the migration process and identifies decision points, including what documents to migrate and when to do it. The presentation focuses on the best practices that have been successfully implemented by multiple teams who have migrated projects of various sizes to DITA. The strategies focus on determining the project goals, then identifying the most efficient migration path."

• [April 07, 2005] Lex Lian (IBM China Software Development Lab, Shanghai) has announced the DITA Open Toolkit 1.0.1 release, characterized as "the first maintenance release of DITA open toolkit, just one month after the initial 1.0 release... We plan to have one maintenance release each month for DITA open toolkit project from now on." Jarno Elovirta, Graham Hannington, L. Mandel and others contributed to this 1.0.1 release. Although no official announcement had been made by IBM [as of 2005-04-04], this "DITA Open Toolkit Version 1.0.1" is successor to the "IBM DITA (Public) Toolkit" released in several versions, including version 1.1.2 [July 2003]. Under the new name and versioning scheme, release 1.0.1 comes from the new SourceForge DITA Open Toolkit Project, which commenced with a version 1.0.0 release. It is "an implementation of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee's specification for Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) DTDs and Schemas. The Toolkit transforms DITA content (maps and topics) into deliverable formats." According to the Project home page, major improvements in this 1.0.0 (1.0.1) release relative to the earlier developerWorks 'dita132' version include: (1) A new processing architecture that includes a preprocessing stage; (2) Full conref resolution in the preprocessor; (3) Conditional resolution (filtering and flagging) in the preprocessor; (4) Second pass transformation into final output formats; (5) Use of Ant and Java for the processing sequence and utility codel (6) A high-quality transform for XHTML output based on code that IBM has tested and used for the past 5 years; (7) Translated libraries for generated text in 47 languages, accessed by region and country code, though globalization not fully tested yet." The DITA Open Toolkit development process "is modelled after other popular and successful Open Source projects, notably the Eclipse development process (for definitions and process statements). The DITA Open Toolkit Contribution Policy "sets forth the general principles under which the DITA Open Toolkit project shall accept contributions, license contributions, license materials owned by this project, and manage other intellectual property matters." [Initially] IBM was "the sole Committer for the DITA Open Toolkit project. The Common Public License (CPL)... serves as the primary license under which the Committer will accept contributions of software, documentation, information and/or other materials..." As of November 2004, release 1.3.2 of the earlier toolkit project was available from the "DITA downloads" section on the IBM developerWorks web site.

• [April 6, 2005] "Transform Eclipse Navigation Files to DITA Navigation Files. Stylesheet Addresses Migration Task that Conversion Tools Do Not Automate." By Loretta Hicks (Advisory Software Engineer, IBM Corporation). From IBM developerWorks (April 6, 2005). "Eclipse TOC files and DITA map files are both XML files that describe the navigation for a collection of topics... For Eclipse help plug-in developers, navigation files (TOC files) represent a considerable investment of effort. If you decide to convert the source files for an Eclipse plug-in to Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) files, then you'll find tools to assist you with converting the HTML files, but the readily available tools do not support conversion of TOC files to DITA map files. This article provides an XSLT stylesheet for converting Eclipse TOC files to DITA map files. It compares the elements of two XML-based navigation files and then uses sample master TOC and subordinate TOC files to illustrate the transformations to DITA. The article also provides instructions for using the XSLT stylesheet to convert your own Eclipse TOC files... When you migrate Eclipse help plug-ins to DITA format, you do not have to manually convert Eclipse TOC files to DITA map files. XSLT enables an easy, automated method to make this conversion, which reduces the risk of error and speeds the migration process. The download for this article provides an XSLT stylesheet for such transformations. The article only addresses converting TOC files to DITA map files. In some cases, DITA maplists would be appropriate. In some cases, newer features of the OASIS DITA 1.0 specification (the 'ditamap' format option) would be appropriate..."

• [February 17, 2005]   OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture TC Approves DITA Version 1.0.    OASIS announced that the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Technical Committee has approved DITA 1.0 as a Committee Draft and recommended its submission for public review. DITA, according to the specification Introduction, is "an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It is also an architecture for creating new topic types and describing new information domains based on existing types and domains. The process for creating new topic types and domains is called specialization. Specialization allows the creation of very specific, targeted document type definitions while still sharing common output transforms and design rules developed for more general types and domains, in much the same way that classes in an object-oriented system can inherit methods of ancestor classes." In DITA, a topic is "the basic unit of authoring and of reuse. A document may contain one topic or multiple topics, and a document type may support authoring one or many kinds of topics. But regardless of where they occur, all topics have the same basic structure and capabilities. Books, PDF files, Websites, and help sets, for example, can all be constructed from the same set of underlying topic content, although there may be some topics that are unique to a particular deliverable, and the organization of topics may differ to take advantage of the unique capabilities of each delivery mechanism." DITA topics are "XML conforming. As such, they are readily viewed, edited, and validated with standard XML tools, although some features such as content referencing and specialization may benefit from customized support." The DITA TC's review materials for the Committee Draft are distributed in ZIP format, containing the DITA Architectural Specification and DITA Language Specification in normative PDF format and non-normative CHM format. Some sixty (60) XML Schema and XML DTD files are included, as well as catalog files. The XML DTDs and Schemas define DITA markup for the base DITA document types. The DITA Architectural Specification provides an overview and introduction, followed by a Chapter 3 on "DITA Markup," which presents DITA topics, DITA maps, Common metadata elements, and Common attributes. Chapter 4 discusses DITA specialization, providing details on the mechanisms DITA provides for defining and extending DITA document types. The Language Specification provides explanations for each element in the base DITA document types. Chapter 1 of the language reference contains an alphabetical listing of DITA elements, each with a description and documentation on permissible attributes. Chapter 2 presents the sets of attributes by named group. The Chapter 3 'Appendix' covers xml:lang values, outputclass processing, and keyref processing.

• [March 2005] "IBM Globalization: Publishing Global Information with DITA." By Robert D. Anderson (Authoring Tools Development, IBM Corporation). From IBM Globalization Newsletter Volume 2, Issue XVIII (March 2005). "The DITA architecture is focused on topics: relatively small, independent pieces of information that can fit in a browser window with minimal scrolling... DITA stores content, not styles. If you need to change your web presentation for a particular region or audience, you can just switch your stylesheet. If you actually need to change the output for one region (such as using a different banner image for bi-directional languages), the transform pipeline design makes it easy for you to tweak the output. Most importantly, DITA lets you create specialized information. This is a feature that allows you to create more specific DTDs for your information, while still using all of the same processes as you do with your original information — from editing, to translation, to publication... Once you have your information stored in DITA, it is a simple matter to translate; after translation, it is equally easy to publish. Tools are already available to convert DITA topics into common formats like XHTML, HTML Help, and PDF. These output transforms work for a wide variety of languages; most new languages can be added by updating the translations for default strings... DITA comes with several built-in features to help create global content... The language setting is actually available on nearly every element in a DITA topic. This allows you to create multiple language documents, where each element is processed based on the currently specified language. For example, you could create a document with Danger notices in various languages. You will need to get the warning itself translated, but the generated "Danger" title will already show up correctly..."

• [February 17, 2005] Content Management Strategies Conference 2005. The 7th Annual Content Management Strategies Conference features a new DITA track, and is co-sponsored by IBM. Venue: Loews Annapolis Hotel, Annapolis, Maryland. April 11-13, 2005. The workshops and sessions related to DITA are presented in this news section, extracted from the program listings. The summaries illustrate a range of DITA application scenarios and implementation issues. Conference blurb: "Are you moving your information to the web? Reusing content among multiple print and online deliverables? Sharing content among departments such as training, marketing, editorial, and technical information development? Are you restricting some content for internal use only or directing it to specific targeted user communities? ... Learn to create modular, topic-based content, ready for assembly into compound documents, and customized for targeted delivery. Take content embedded in those massive tomes and move critical components to the precise points where they are needed, in print or on the web..."

• [February 15, 2005] "Migrating HTML to DITA, Part 2: Extend the Migration for More Robust Results. Tips for Working with the XSLT." By Robert D. Anderson (Developer, Information Development Workbench, IBM). From IBM developerWorks (February 10, 2005). "The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) holds many advantages over information authored directly in HTML, including better reuse, easily changed presentation styles, and easy single sourcing. HTML and DITA have many elements in common, which makes it relatively easy to migrate from HTML into plain DITA topics. Although migrating to the topic information type is not ideal, it is sometimes the appropriate solution; the basic migration into a topic is also the foundation upon which more specialized migrations are based. DITA articles are generally divided by information type: The tool as written supports migrations to topic, concept, reference, and task information types. This article provides in-depth information on the migration path for each of these types, and indicates the entry points for those wishing to override portions of the conversion. He offers a small sample override for those who want to bypass specific elements, and suggest items to use for more extensive overrides..."

• [January 31, 2005] "Migrating HTML to DITA, Part 1: Simple Steps to Move From HTML to DITA. Get a Quick Start With DITA Using Available HTML Topics." By Robert D. Anderson (Developer, Information Development Workbench, IBM); Don Day (Lead DITA Architect, IBM); Erik Hennum (Advisory Software Engineer, IBM). From IBM developerWorks (January 31, 2005). "The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) has emerged as a standard topic-oriented document architecture. DITA holds many advantages over information authored directly in HTML, including better reuse, easily changed presentation styles, and easy single sourcing. This article, the first of two parts, explains how to get a quick start with DITA using HTML topics that are already available. It shows you how to use the provided XSLT transform to do the migration, and examines what is needed to ensure quality results... The code provided here is used within IBM to convert HTML articles to DITA. Although many authors have used this migration tool without changes, we know that this is not always possible. We distribute this to you knowing that it is a generic transform and that it cannot handle every HTML article. In many cases, articles already contain specific markup that can easily match DITA structures. In this case, you are advised to override parts of the migration to get a more effective migration and to save any existing information architecture... You have a lot to gain by moving your topics from HTML to DITA. To start with, you can more easily reuse topics or parts of topics, you can produce multiple output formats, and you can rapidly change the presentation for an entire deliverable just by switching your CSS file. If you already have well-structured topics, take a few of them and try using the provided conversion tool. You might find that, with very little manual intervention, you can move completely to a DITA-sourced environment. Even with complicated HTML, you might be able to clean up the output without too much work..."

• [December 09, 2004] "Topic-Oriented Information Development and Its Role in Globalization. The Case for the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA)." By Bill Trippe. From the Gilbane White Papers, sponsored by Idiom, Inc. December 2004. 14 pages. "Globalization is a critical issue for any company interested in expanding its markets. For the company that markets sophisticated products, globalization is both more difficult and more critical because of the rich content that is needed to support these products. Product document localization may well be the most difficult aspect of globalization. Documents often are long, with a mixture of text, tables, charts, and graphics. Moreover, the documentation must be produced in different forms — print, online Help sets, HTML. Translating such documents into multiple languages can be challenge. Single-source publishing has matured as a method for producing complex documents in many formats. XML in particular has become the preferred format for single-sourcing, enabling companies to both repurpose their content into different formats and reuse content modules in different content types. Thus, a procedure that appears in one document can be stored once, edited once, reused in many different documents and repurposed into many different formats. For all of its upside, XML-based single-source publishing has proven to be expensive and complicated to implement. XML-based single sourcing requires significant tool development, data conversion, and system integration prior to realizing the benefits of repurposing and reuse. To mitigate this, some vertical industries have developed their own XML tag sets. While successful on their own, these vertical industry efforts have not been extensible to other industries. A new XML-based approach to information development is the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). DITA is a topic-centric architecture that provides a core Document Type Definition (DTD) and schema for developing documentation typical of many kinds of products. Conceived over several years at IBM, the extensible DITA architecture is now being managed by a technical committee at OASIS. We looked at one organization, software developer Information Builders, Inc. (IBI), and their implementation of DITA for managing a large set of documentation that is translated into many languages. IBI made a strategic decision to adopt DITA, has implemented it, and is already realizing benefits from the decision..." See also the Blog entry. [PDF format, cache; compare "DITA: Globalize your On Demand Business."]

• [December 03, 2004] "DITA - The Mechanics of a Single Sourcing Project." By France Baril (Documentation Architect, IXIASOFT Inc., Montréal, Québec, Canada). Presented at the IDEAlliance XML 2004 Conference and Exposition (December 15-19, 2004, Washington, DC, USA). "The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. This paper describes how DITA-based documentation was implemented at CEDROM-SNi, one of Canada's leading on-line news content aggregators. The project delivers documentation as diverse as user training materials and Web Services reference guides targeted to programmers. We focus on the benefits, how tos, and lessons learned. Technical documentation has its own unique challenges. Its deliverables range from simple reference guides and educational material to complex, multilingual procedure manuals. Critical success factors of a documentation project are numerous and diverse — usability, deadlines, cost, language, delivery media (paper, online) — all of which have their own purpose and challenges. The paper discusses these issues and provides a framework for future DITA projects... Using DITA allowed for a quick start. Having access to a DTD set and sample XSL transformations saved me a lot of time. However, there was definitely an adaptation period; time was necessary to learn how to write within the information structure, use the tools and be comfortable with the tag set. The overhead needed to adapt was worth it for this project because of the necessity to build multiple training guides and the changing nature of user tasks over the development period. If no extensive reuse had been needed, it might not have been worth the time and effort. The first, system implementation, part of the project was a success. The next part includes a bigger human factor as other content developers will need to be able to modify topics. We do not foresee particular challenges related to DITA regarding our workflow process development. DITA and XML allowed for a lot of automation and reuse, and processes that have been defined will serve as a solid structural foundation for future projects. In fact, we are already using what we built in a new project."

• [November 30, 2004] "An Introduction to Darwin Information Typing Architecture: DITA." By Dave Schell (Senior Manager, IBM). Presented at DITA Open House. Hosted by IBM and Nokia. November 19, 2004. Nokia House. Farnborough, Hampshire, [Southern] England. 22 pages. History of DITA: Why was DITA developed? Introduction to DITA: What is DITA? Benefits of DITA: Why should you care? Revision of an earlier document, adds material on the business value of DITA: Value of DITA to content creators, Value of DITA to customers and users, Value of DITA to business partners and content integrators.

• [November 30, 2004] "Principles of DITA Specialization:Extending the Base." By Erik Hennum (IBM User Technology). Presented at DITA Open House. Hosted by IBM and Nokia. November 19, 2004. Nokia House. Farnborough, Hampshire, [Southern] England. 17 pages. "Reuse content through topics (Author content as standalone information, Reuse topics as components). Reuse designs through specialization (Meet requirements specific to your organization, Keep interoperability with others). Reuse processing (Inherit base and intermediate processes, Customize new specialization only as needed)..."

• [November 30, 2004] "Information Development with DITA." By Ian Larner (User Technologies, IBM Hursley Lab, England). Presented at DITA Open House. Hosted by IBM and Nokia. November 19, 2004. Nokia House. Farnborough, Hampshire, [Southern] England. 17 pages (presentation slides with notes). WebSphere Application Server, DITA Case Study. "I have been involved with DITA since the early days, and was part of a WebSphere project that moved from HTML to DITA, before it was officially supported. I personally migrated over 2000 HTML files into DITA, while continuing development of the content. Using the default transforms, some tweaks, and some simple custom XSLT, this migration went briskly and without hitch. I also wrote some custom XSLT (such as DITA-FO) for the project needs until the core DITA support became available. Since then we have spread the use of DITA to associated groups, and have evolved the sophistication of our DITA usage... DITA has been invaluable for our information development: [1] Reuse by content reference and metadata-driven control. Writers are able to write things once and mark the information with standard tags and metadata for reuse within and between topics. By using the content reference (conref) functionality of DITA, we are able to automatically reuse information from one topic to another. We do this at all levels — from entire maps, parts of maps, topics, sections, paragraphs, down to phrases (one or more words). The main consideration is how well writers and translators can handle specific content references without confusion... I use custom XSL to change DITA from one use to another, again from entire maps down to individual elements like link tags and phrases. This enables use to repurpose and recombine information for different uses... I make custom, architected, use of standard DITA tags and metadata to enable writers to develop information for specific uses. This provides a 'specialised' DITA way to develop information, without the need to implement properly-specialised DITA DTDs. For writers who are familiar with the standard DITA tags, this is a good way to go, because it is most closely compatible with standard DITA editors and XSLT..."

• [November 30, 2004] "Implementing a Common Information Architecture Using DITA. The Nokia Experience." By Indi Liepa (Senior Information Architect, Nokia Technology Platforms). Presented at DITA Open House. Hosted by IBM and Nokia. November 19, 2004. Nokia House. Farnborough, Hampshire, [Southern] England. 13 pages. Updated Nokia case study. Why Nokia selected the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) as a common content architecture and how Nokia is using DITA.

• [November 24, 2004] "DITA Toolkit 1.3.2 Update." Posting from Don Day to the 'dita-users' list on Yahoo Groups. "The IBM maintainers of the DITA Toolkit on developerWorks have offered another point release that fixes some additional bugs and adds a new processing option. DITA 1.3.2 adds a basic transform for DITA-to-DocBook conversion. In particular, this experimental capability should allow adopters to explore whether a book defined in DocBook could process section content defined as DITA topics. A new document in the root directory, files.txt, describes the organization of the toolkit to help you better understand what might be of interest to you..." Erik Hennum added: A couple of strategies to explore might be as follows: (1) Maintain the bibliographic definition in DocBook and the content in DITA. For instance, it would be possible to use DocBook extension mechanisms to add an element to DocBook at the section level that refers to a DITA map or topic. Preprocessing could convert the referenced DITA content to DocBook and replace the referencing element. The result could then be processed with DocBook tools or in DocBook environments. (2) Convert the experimental DITA bookmap to Docbook. To illustrate the second approach, I've appended a sketch of an XSLT transform that could be dropped into the demo/book directory within the latest DITA distribution as an initial basis for the exploration... [see the XSLT] See the file listing for the ZIP archive of Toolkit version 1.3.2. Canonical download from the DITA Downloads page. Note: see now the SourceForge DITA Open Toolkit Project.

• [November 22, 2004] "An XML Architecture for Technical Documentation: The Darwin Information Typing Architecture." By Don Day, Erik Hennum, John Hunt, Michael Priestley, David Schell, and Nancy Harrison. From WritersUA. Updated November 22, 2004 or later. ['The article provides an overview of the overall DITA process and practical information on "Getting Started" for teams who are looking to test or implement DITA.'] "DITA is an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It is also an architecture for creating new information types and describing new information domains, allowing groups to create very specific, targeted document type definitions using a process called specialization, while at the same time reusing common output transforms and design rules. We discuss several methods that can be used to extend DITA's basic topic types..." Note: This is an updated and revised version of the paper prepared for presentation at Society for Technical Communication (STC) 50th Annual Conference, May 18-21, 2003, Wyndham Anatole Hotel, Dallas, Texas, USA.

• [November 16, 2004] "Blast Radius and IXIASOFT Team to Deliver DITA-Based Solution." - "Blast Radius, provider of the leading XML content authoring product XMetaL, and IXIASOFT, the developer of TEXTML Server, a native XML database and search engine, have partnered in creating a content lifecycle solution that integrates their products and the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) standard. DITA, introduced by IBM, is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing and delivering technical information. The first implementation of the DITA-based solution is nearing completion at CEDROM-SNi, one of Canada's largest news content aggregator. Using an XML content authoring and management solution based on the DITA standard, CEDROM-SNi will be able to efficiently reduce production and maintenance costs, repurpose and customize content, and provide multi-language support for the online help mechanisms offered on each of its three Web sites: Eureka.cc (French Canada), Europresse.com (France) and Newscan.com (English Canada). The DITA architecture of the solution allows for topic specialization and enables flexible content organization for easy reuse. The combination of DITA, TEXTML Server and XMetaL makes it possible to organize content so that information pieces can be effectively reused in different contexts. The integration of TEXTML Server and XMetaL provides tremendous flexibility and performance for the DITA-based solution. While TEXTML Server's native XML support enables efficient management of XML content and advanced searching capabilities, XMetaL's XML authoring tool allows administrators to easily manage different interfaces for each product and to deliver content to multiple outputs. IXIASOFT and Blast Radius will showcase a demo of the DITA application, featuring the integration of XMetaL and TEXTML Server at XML Conference 2004, being held November 15-19 in Washington, D.C..." See: (1) Blast Radius web site; (2) XMetaL; (3) IXIASOFT web site; (4) TEXTML Server.

• [October 13, 2004] DITA Toolkit Update. The DITA toolkit maintainers announced the release of a refresh level of the "dita13" toolkit, downloadable from the IBM developerWorks web site. This minor revision fixes several reported DTD and transform issues; it also provide an improved directory structure for adding support for new specializations. The "dita131.zip" package is available at ftp://www6.software.ibm.com/software/developer/library/x-ditazips/dita131.zip. This level of DTDs is equivalent to the (revised, May 13, 2004) OASIS submission package -01 in the DITA TC's document library, although the schemas now implement a revised design pattern that works more reliably on current XSD validators. See the "dita131.zip" package file listing and the description of changes vis-à-vis the original "dita13" release. [cache]

• [October 12, 2004] "The Darwin Information Typing Architecture: An Overview." Presented in connection with Idiom's WorldServer OpenTopic and WorldServer Global Electronic Publishing products. "DITA is the popular XML standard that's revolutionizing the way modern document publishing teams author, manage, and deliver topic-driven documents and online help systems. Short for Darwin Information Typing Architecture, DITA was originally created by IBM SGML and XML content architects to help organizations overcome the barriers to XML migration, and more easily leverage XML on an ongoing basis. Today, DITA is managed by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), the standards body responsible for XML standards... DITA is one of the most significant innovations in XML publishing. It is an extensible, XML-based publishing architecture for authoring, managing, and delivering topic-driven information. At its core is a set of design principles for creating information-typed content modules at a topic level. DITA can be used to realize the full potential of an XML-based publishing system, to achieve significant improvements in author productivity, information quality, time-to-market, and cost control..."

• [October 12, 2004] "Idiom Delivers WorldServer OpenTopic to Simplify and Accelerate the Delivery of XML-Based Content. New Option Headlines a Long List of Enhancements to Industry-Leading Global Electronic Publishing Solution." - "The global content lifecycle leader, Idiom Technologies, Inc., today announced WorldServer OpenTopic, a new and revolutionary XML-based publishing solution for simplifying and accelerating the creation, management, localization, and production of print and electronic documents. WorldServer OpenTopic headlines a variety of enhancements included in the latest version of WorldServer Global Electronic Publishing, which was also announced today. Based on the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), as well as other new features and capabilities, WorldServer OpenTopic is an open and extensible solution that accelerates the transition to XML-based publishing, and streamlines ongoing global publishing efforts. It enables Idiom customers to improve the quality and consistency of evolving content, while significantly reducing the time and costs associated with authoring, updating, translating, and delivering information. 'We evaluated a number of global publishing vendors and their solutions,' said Tanya Wendling, Senior Director of Cross-Media Publishing in Adobe's Marketing Communications group. 'WorldServer OpenTopic integrates with Adobe's publishing tools, enhancing the efficiency and timetable for our content updates. That integration made our decision to purchase WorldServer Global Electronic Publishing an easy one.' WorldServer OpenTopic reduces the time, cost and effort related to XML implementation and use, through the following capabilities: (1) Out-of-the-Box Document Type Definition (DTD): eliminate the need to develop DTDs from scratch by using the WorldServer OpenTopic DTD, based on DITA. (2) Automated Print Transformation Process: automate the process of converting XML topics into reader-friendly documents in both electronic and printed forms. This powerful XSL-FO-based process addresses a host of layout and language-specific requirements, such as page design, font, and index generation. (3) Automated Help Transformation Process: automate the process of generating electronic help systems, such as Microsoft Compiled Help (CHM), or browser-based help systems, that include automatically generated tables of contents, and keyword searching. (4) XQuery Templates: simplify the search process for authors, making it easier to find reusable content, or content that can be used in cross- references. (5) Getting Started Kit: DITA conforming document samples, best practices, and other items make it easy for publishing teams to come up to speed quickly and fully leverage OpenTopic..."

• [October 09, 2004] "Implementing an Information Architecture Using OASIS DITA: A Nokia Case Study." By Indi Liepa (Senior Information Architect, Content Solutions, Nokia/TP, Southwood UK). Presented at the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC) Conference 2004, Nr Thame, Oxfordshire, 9-October-2004. Posted 27-October-2004 to the 'dita-users@yahoogroups.com' list with the following comment: "... We decided in Nokia (the mobile phones part of the business) that we needed to specialise to get the strong focussed topic typing we need in our content creation environment. We are creating new content in DITA and restructuring existing content from a wide range of source formats such as Word and Frame. We have up to two levels of specialisation on top of the DITA ancestor topic. We also have used domain specialisation to create domains of elements for our mobile domain. You can see an overview of how we have used the concept in our presentation at the CM conference last spring, or in the attached presentation I gave at the ISTC conference in the UK. Hopefully, this gives you an idea of the path we have chosen. We are not currently doing any automated legacy conversions as, in our business, the life-cycle of product information is very short and our user groups are restructuring, simplifying and moving to DITA at the same time..." [source .ZIP file]

• [September 20, 2004]   Arbortext Version 5.1 Supports Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA).    Arbortext, Inc. has announced the Version 5.1 release of its enterprise publishing software with enhanced support of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) specification. Arbortext's XML-based single-source publishing architecture "helps companies capture their information in a single media-independent form and automatically publish from XML to multiple media types, including Web, print, CD-ROM and wireless devices." Arbortext's software is applicable especially to the production of catalogs, datasheets, operating instructions, user guides, service manuals, training courses, technical journals, reference publications and other complex documents. The Arbortext Version 5.1 release features several enhancements for DITA. The Darwin Information Typing Architecture was originally designed by IBM, and is now under development in the OASIS DITA Technical Committee. DITA is an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It is also an architecture for creating new information types and describing new information domains based on existing types and domains. This allows groups to create very specific, targeted document type definitions using a process called specialization, while still sharing common output transforms and design rules developed for more general types and domains. Five new document types have been added for DITA support in Arbortext Version 5.1 (Topic, Task, Reference, Concept, and Ditabase) these types enable authors to create content based on the DITA methodology. Arbortext now also provides custom table support: "also referred to as semantic tables, Arbortext 5.1 supports custom tables, which not only conforms to DITA's table models (simpletable, choicetable) and properties, but also allows users to select their own tags to be displayed and edited in a tabular form." The Arbortext Version 5.1 software includes 'Conref' support: "Conref is DITA's inclusion method used to include content from another file, which enables efficient reuse of information." Enhanced specialization support is also feature in the Arbortext release: "With the ability to use a single stylesheet to control the style of Topic, Task, Concept, Reference and other DITA applications, users can quickly expand their publishing applications as well as easily incorporate content produced in other DITA-aware systems."

• [September 19, 2004] "Design Patterns for Information Architecture with DITA Map Domains. Defining a Type for Collections of Topics." By Erik Hennum (Advisory Software Engineer, IBM), Don Day (Lead DITA Architect, IBM), John Hunt (User Assistance Architect, IBM), and Dave A. Schell (Chief Strategist and Tools Lead, IBM). See the reference with abstract above.

• [June 15, 2004] "Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Specialization using W3C XML Schema." [To be] Presented by Eric A. Sirois (IBM Canada) at Extreme Markup Languages 2004, August 06, 2004. "The latest release of DITA includes an version of the architecture using W3C XML Schema. Recently a new DITA Technical Committee has been created at OASIS for development and maintenance of DITA. The DITA XML Schema is an experiment to determine the merits of XML Schema to create and maintain specialized content. Deriving new specialized content using XML Schema object oriented design helps make specialization less error prone than manually doing them using DTDs. Support for authoring documents based on XML Schema is growing, but there are still some limitations to standard tool support you need to be aware of before accepting XML Schema as your default method to author the content of DITA topics..."

• [June 15, 2004] Implementing DITA: Case Study of a Single Sourcing Project." By France Baril (Ixiasoft). [To be] Presented at Extreme Markup Languages 2004, Thursday, August 05, 2004 (Montréal, Québec, Canada). "The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based, end-to end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. DITA-based documentation was recently implemented at Canada's leading on-line news content aggregator. Documentation as diverse as user training materials and web services reference guides targeted to programmers are delivered using a DITA-based application. I focus on the benefits, how-tos, and lessons learned in a complex project where critical success factors were numerous and diverse, including usability, deadlines, cost, language, and delivery media (including paper, online)..."

• [May 20, 2004] "Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Overview." By Diane Boos (PSC STC Communications Committee). In Soundoff! [Newsletter of the Puget Sound Chapter of the STC] Volume 3, Issue 6 (April/May, 2004). "DITA can finally deliver the dream of single sourcing. Domain and topic specialization offer a flexible way to provide accurate information from original documents from any source."

• [May 18, 2004] The Adobe FrameMaker DITA Development Group. Founded: April 18, 2004. Yahoo Group 'framemaker-dita'. "The FrameMaker-DITA group is a team of developers and reviewers, working together to design a DITA EDD. The goal is to produce a DITA EDD that may be freely distributed and provide other FrameMaker users with a starting point in implementing DITA. The group was started and is moderated by Kay Ethier. It is a private effort by a team of individuals and is not a corporate project. All individual efforts (development and review) are voluntary. If you would like to provide assistance, contact the group moderator. To avoid "too many cooks" syndrome the group membership will be capped and limited in number of developers and industry expert reviewers..."

• [May 14, 2004] "Statement to W3C Compound Document Committee." By Eliot Kimber and Michael Priestley on behalf of The OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture Technical Committee. Prepared for The W3C Workshop on Web Applications and Compound Documents, June 1-2, 2004, San Jose, California, USA; see the other position papers. Revised version of 2004-05-03 document; see immediately following. Summary of the edits: (1) "Added some information about namespaces, although the current toolkit is namespace-unaware, it is within the bounds of the architecture to have one namespace per design module; (2) Incorporated readability edits to the first half of the document; (3) Left the terminology stuff at the end, but gave it a heading to indicate that it is not in fact part of our position, but a note on the terminology involved in their call for positions (where they provide their own definition of compound document)." Introduction: "The subject of compound documents is of primary interest to the DITA Technical Committee. The Darwin Information Typing Architecture defines a set of techniques for using XML in order to enable the effective and efficient development of re-usable information components, primarily in the context of technical documentation, informative Web sites, and similar types of structured, topically-focused information for consumption by humans. This activity naturally involves the combination, whether syntactically or semantically, of elements from different name spaces and governed by different schemas..." See a Report on W3C Web Application and Compound Document workshop from Erik Hennum (DITA Domains Architect). Source: see postings from Don Day and Michael Priestley.

• [May 04, 2004] "Statement to W3C Compound Document Committee." By Eliot Kimber and Michael Priestley. Posted 2004-05-03 to the OASIS DITA TC document repository, proposed as a statement "on behalf of the OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture Technical Committee." Excerpt: "The subject of compound documents is of primary interest to the DITA Technical Committee. The Darwin Information Typing Architecture defines a set of techniques for using XML in order to enable the effective and efficient development of re-usable information components, primarily in the context of technical documentation, informative Web sites, and similar types of structured, topically-focused information for consumption by humans. This activity naturally involves the combination, whether syntactically or semantically, of elements from different name spaces and governed by different schemas... As we understand the scope of the W3C Compound Document workshop, it is focused primarily on issues surrounding XML documents that have elements from different name spaces (and thus implicitly, different schemas) and what that means. Within this scope there are a number of important use cases that must be considered, including the implications for processors that must make sense of compound documents, how communities of interest can define and impose constraints on what combinations are allowed, and how to do controlled specialization of element types in a way that does not, for example, require the creation of overarching XSD schemas that define the specializations as part of the base element type definitions. DITA has a part to play in each of these areas: (1) Our specialization-based processing architecture lets both standard and customized transforms work with unknown document types based on their ancestry. (2) Our DTD/schema integration rules provide a framework in which communities can define their own combinations of markup without breaking interoperability or processing infrastructure. (3) Our specialization scheme separates out the definition of new markup into modules that can be consistently and predictably integrated with other DITA modules... We observe that the term 'compound document' is often used to refer not to single instances that combine elements from different name spaces but systems of independent documents linked together in order to define a single unit of processing, delivery, or management (i.e., hyperdocuments explicilty created and processed as a single unit of processing, as opposed to ad-hyperdocuments created through the creation of uncoordinated linking actions). Both the XLink and XInclude specifications define mechanisms for creating this type of compound document, as does the current DITA specification (through its map mechanism). This sense of compound document is largely orthogonal to the question of combining elements from different schemas: most existing systems that create this type of compound document do so in the context of a single document type. We urge the W3C to clarify its use of the term 'compound document' to clearly distinguish at least these two senses in order to establish a clear and unambiguous standard vocabulary by which we, as a community, can communicate efficiently and effectively on this important and challenging subjects..." [cache]

• [April 2004] "Practical XML. DITA: Four Letters You Have to Know." In ArborText XML Publishing Network [XPN] (April 2004). "DITA is one of the most important innovations in XML publishing in recent memory. And if you're using or plan to use XML for publishing technical documentation, you will encounter DITA sooner or later. Short for 'Darwin Information Typing Architecture,' DITA is an IBM invention that the company recently contributed to the community under the auspices of OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org), the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards. More information about the technical committee for DITA that OASIS formed can be found at [CFP]. In this article, the first of a multi-part series on DITA, we provide an overview of DITA. We will delve into the details in subsequent articles..."

• [April 14, 2004] "OASIS Backs Reusable Content Spec for Documents. Darwin Information Typing Architecture Committee Formed." By Paul Krill. In InfoWorld (April 14, 2004). "OASIS this week said it has formed a technical committee to advance Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), an XML-based document creation and management standard for authoring reusable content in documents. Through DITA, content reuse is built into the authoring process. The XML architecture defined by the newly formed OASIS DITA Technical Committee will be used to design, write, and publish technical documentation in print and on the Web, OASIS said. DITA would be used in products such as help systems and technical manuals, said David Schell, senior manager at IBM responsible for authoring tools for information development groups and convener of the OASIS technical committee. DITA, which is being submitted to OASIS by IBM, will be a standard for the interchange and sharing of content... DITA will extend existing content markup techniques to represent domains of specialized markup that are common across sets of topics, such as hardware versus software. Larger documents can be created by aggregating topic units. Content referencing combines several topics into a single document or allows content-sharing among topics... By enabling definitive semantics, DITA allows for processes that can be more automated, consistent authoring, and better applicability to specific industries. Through a common specification, DITA content owners will benefit from industry support, interoperability, and reuse of community contributions, OASIS said. Through specialization, content owners can address specific requirements of a business or industry..."

• [April 13, 2004] "Arbortext Announces DITA Support, Enables Information-Architected Topic-Based Authoring." - "Arbortext, the leading global provider of automated publishing software, today announced the next release of Arbortext 5 will include support for Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), an IBM-created, OASIS-sponsored initiative that is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. This architecture consists of a set of design principles for creating 'information-typed' modules at a topic level and using that content in delivery modes such as online help and product support portals. DITA is an innovative open standards initiative to develop specialized data models for XML publishing applications that can readily adapt to the requirements of diverse applications while retaining both information and application compatibility. Starting with the DITA 'topic' data model, different groups can modify it to support their unique requirements without fear of breaking enterprise publishing software applications or creating incompatibilities with other groups or divisions that would prevent information sharing. DITA specializations can be 'snapped on' as deltas to the base support, preventing the need to create or update massive DTDs. The core of DITA provides rich set of semantics for creating architected information. 'We are excited to be among the first to include support for DITA in our software,' said PG Bartlett, Vice President of Product Marketing at Arbortext. 'We believe this is a very important initiative because it addresses the 'brittleness' of traditional data models, thereby alleviating much of the expense of creating and updating them. Arbortext is the first to include provisions for DITA specialization in our core product. This allows DITA customizations to be programmed once and then used in all specialized DITA documents.' 'Arbortext continues to be a leader in the industry with its support for standards,' said David Schell, Corporate Lead for Technical Publications and User Assistance for IBM. 'Because they are building support for DITA into the core of their software, organizations that use Arbortext software will be able to build highly customized applications while taking full advantage of the benefits that DITA has to offer'..."

• [April 12, 2004] "OASIS DITA Technical Committee Forms to Advance XML Standard for Authoring Reusable Content in Documents." - "International standards consortium, OASIS, announced plans to advance the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), a document creation and management specification that builds content reuse into the authoring process. The XML architecture defined by the new OASIS DITA Technical Committee will be used to design, write, manage, and publish technical documentation in print and on the Web... Focusing on the 'topic' as a conceptual unit of authoring, DITA will extend existing content markup to represent domains of specialized markup common across sets of topics, e.g., hardware vs. software. Larger documents can be created by aggregating topic units. Content referencing combines several topics into a single document or allows content to be shared among topics. 'With DITA, the distinction between reusable content and reusing content disappears,' said Dave Schell, convener of the OASIS DITA Techncial Committee. 'That's because DITA's strength lies in a unified content reuse mechanism that enables an element to replace itself with the content of a like element elsewhere, either in the current topic or in a separate topic that shares the same content models.' Don Day of IBM, proposed chair of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee, added, 'DITA goes beyond standard entity reuse to allow reused content to exist in a valid XML file with a DTD. The net result is that reused content gets validated at authoring time, rather than at reuse time, catching problems at their source.' By enabling definitive semantics, DITA will allow more automatable processes, consistent authoring and better retrievability and applicability to specific industries. Through the use of a common specification, DITA content owners will benefit from industry support, interoperability, and reuse of community contributions. At the same time, through specialization, content owners will be able to address the specific requirements of their business or industry. OASIS DITA Technical Committee members include representatives of Arbortext, Innodata Isogen, IBM, and others. The group brings together XML tools vendors, consultants on Information Architectures and Content Management Systems (CMS), and users of the DITA Document Type Definitions (DTD) and Schemas. Participation remains open to all organizations and individuals; OASIS will host a mail list for public comment..." See other details in the news story.

• [March 31, 2004] "Dynamic Navigation in DITA." By Erik Hennum (IBM DITA Architect) and Robert Anderson. IBM User Technology. [March 2004.] Presented at the Content Management Strategies Conference 2004 (April 19-21, 2004). 17 slides. "IBM is exploring dynamic management of content using DITA. DITA rigorously separates content from context. The context can be represented as a manipulatable TopicMap. An information provider can both assemble information from multiple sources and personalize information for multiple audiences." Contents: (1) The problem with static content [challenges of integrating information components, serving multiple audiences, and scaling to the enterprise]; (2) Solving the content problem with DITA [creating content for many contexts, specifying metadata properties such as the content audience]; (3) Solving the processing problem [scoping and filtering content with an on-demand repository]; (4) Demo of solution.

• [March 31, 2004] "Using DITA at Nokia Mobile Phones: Nokia Common XML Content Architecture." DITA Case Study. By Indi Liepa and Sirpa Ruokangas (Nokia Mobile Phones). [To be] Presented at the Content Management Strategies Conference 2004 (April 19-21, 2004). "Developing a topic-based XML authoring architecture from scratch? This is not the way Nokia wanted to proceed. Nokia has developed a topic-based XML content architecture based on IBM's Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). Indi and Sirpa discuss why Nokia selected DITA as their base architecture, how Nokia applied the existing DITA mechanisms and transforms, and how the Nokia development team specialized the DITA concept, task, and reference structures for Nokia use. They demonstrate with sample content. Indi and Sirpa explain how the business case for a common authoring architecture was built. Through the DITA platform, Nokia hopes to promote content reuse across information products, media, and organizational teams. Furthermore, the goal is to reduce the overlapping effort between authoring teams as well as to improve the efficiency of the content engineering process..."

• [March 29, 2004] OASIS Members Form New TC for the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA).   OASIS Sponsor Members Arbortext, IBM, Innodata Isogen, and Nokia have proposed a new OASIS DITA Technical Committee for development and maintenance of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). Joined by other individual members (from Comtech Services, IXIASOFT, Mulberry Technologies, Syntext), the TC will further define and maintain DITA to promote the use of the architecture for creating standard information types and domain-specific markup vocabularies. Pioneered by researchers at IBM (Don Day, Michael Priestley, David Schell, and others), DITA is an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. The OASIS DITA Technical Committee will "articulate the principles of the DITA architecture through formal specifications, assess the relationship of DITA specialization to emerging XML standards, define appropriate enhancements of the architecture, and standardize information types in the DITA type hierarchy. The TC will also encourage cooperation within and between the various topical domains of potential DITA users, designing a generic methodology for specialized extensions of the base specification by user communities." In connection with the new TC's formation, the DITA developers have prepared an updated version of the DITA Toolkit containing new DTDs and source for the DITA Language Reference. Don Day of IBM is the Proposed Chair of the OASIS DITA TC. The first meeting of the TC will be held as a teleconference on May 4, 2004.

• [March 29, 2004] A Call for Participation was issued in connection with a new OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Technical Committee. The purpose of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee (TC) is "to define and maintain the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and to promote the use of the architecture for creating standard information types and domain-specific markup vocabularies. The TC objectives are (1) To articulate the principles of the DITA architecture through formal specifications. (2) To assess the relationship of DITA specialization to emerging XML standards (such as the ontology initiatives associated with the Semantic Web). (3) To define appropriate enhancements of the architecture. (4) To standardize the information types in the DITA type hierarchy. (5) To encourage cooperation within and between the various topical domains of potential DITA users. It is anticipated that, in addition to the common information elements provided in the base specification, specific communities of users may develop additional, specialized type hierarchies of particular relevance to their use cases. The TC may choose to recognize new information types or domain specializations where a new specialization provides a standard solution for a well-established need, has broad support, does not conflict with existing types, and serves as a useful base for additional specialization. For example, the concept, task, and reference information types do so for the user assistance community. The TC anticipates maintaining a set of core information types of general utility, implemented in schema languages (such as DTD or XML Schema) selected by the TC. Recognized types may also be maintained by other groups — including other OASIS TCs. (6) To design a generic methodology for specialized extensions of the base specification by user communities. This methodology may address issues such as delivery of a reference implementation, operation of a public registry for specializations, suggested guidelines for development of a user community's information types, and so forth. When the above tasks are completed, the TC may reconsider further work, which will be defined as allowed by the OASIS TC Process..."

• [March 29, 2004] DITA Toolkit Update 2004-03. Release date: planned for 2004-03-30, on the IBM developerWorks web site. The IBM DITA development team has prepared a new DITA package updating the DITA Toolkit issued in June 2003. This new release includes the latest set of bug fixes and some proposed new markup; these same updated DTDs will be provided to the OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture Technical Committee. "New or updated DTDs include the full map dtd (not just a subset) that IBM uses for its authoring, a new domain that inserts a prototype imagemap specialization, an alt element for image, a prophead structure to allow user-defined properties headings, and a proposed book-printing capability based on a specialization of the map dtd. The team has included the DITA source for the DITA Language Reference in this distribution as well. A standard map produces alphabetical online help; a bookmap version produces the hierarchically-arranged PDF of the same topics. The new toolkit also contains demos of map-based processing, which is where the real power of using topics is demonstrated. Ant build scripts are provided; in a properly set-up environment, they can generate output to HTML Help, JavaHelp, Eclipse Help, Web page models, and XSL-FO — all the way to PDF if you invoke FOP..." [description supplied by Don Day]

• [March 2004] "The DITA Standard: Designed for Topics." Presented by Erik Hennum (IBM). Twelfth Annual WritersUA Conference (March 28-31, 2004) "DITA is an XML standard for modular and extensible topic-based information including technical information provided for User Assistance on the Web. DITA supports defining and processing new information types as specializations of existing types to let organizations meet special requirements and still collaborate with the broader community. DITA topics can be assembled in different combinations for many deliverables, are optimized for navigation and search, and are well suited for concurrent authoring and for content management..."

• [March 2004] "Enabling Information Architecture with DITA." Presented by Andrea Ames (IBM). Twelfth Annual WritersUA Conference (March 28-31, 2004) "Information architecture is the selection, chunking, labeling, categorization, organization, and structure of information. Following a user-centered process that includes user and task analysis and validation, you can develop a software user-assistance architecture that supports: consistency in presentation and user experience; reuse and repurposing across media, deliverables, and solutions; and flexible assembly of chunks of information for multiple contexts and audiences. Using examples from DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture), an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for developing technical information, this presentation describes the goals, considerations, and requirements of an information architecture for software user assistance, such as information selection, typing, and modelling; topic relationships and modelling; and planning for information reuse."

• [December 03, 2003] Serna XML Editor from Syntext Supports DocBook, DITA, and TEI with XSLT and XSL-FO. Syntext Unveils Next Generation XML WYSIWYG Editor. - "Syntext, Inc. is proud to announce general availability of Serna (http://www.syntext.com), the next-generation true WYSIWYG XML (Extensible Markup Language) editor. The key advantage of the new editor is its unique capability to author XML documents in their final (printed) appearance, in addition to their unformatted representation. Serna is the first and the only XML editor on the market that incorporates on-the-fly XSL-driven rendering technology. This innovative approach eliminates time-consuming edit-and-preview cycles, while providing end users with a familiar, convenient, and intuitive WYSIWYG interface. Serna makes XML editing look and feel like conventional word processing and allows casual users and professional authors to create and maintain complex XML documents. Syntext CEO, Paul Antonov, is confident that Serna will provide the long-awaited breakthrough in the greatest barrier to the adoption of XML by the business world. 'Before the introduction of Serna, switching to XML required replacement of the ubiquitous word-processing with very different XML data-tree editing. This entailed radical changes in the mindset and work habits of personnel, causing slow adoption and massive retraining costs,' said Antonov. 'Serna removes this obstacle by hiding XML behind the familiar facade of a word processor, making XML editing accessible not only to professional technical writers, but also to managers, clerks and non-technical users in fields as diverse as law, finance, government, manufacturing and engineering.' Serna makes another advance by providing full functionality on both Microsoft Windows and Linux OS. Its highly optimized, C++-based design makes it unusually fast and responsive on both platforms. Serna is capable of editing multilingual Unicode-based XML documents, making it an ideal solution for companies worldwide. The key features of Syntext Serna include: out-of-box support of leading industrial XML standards DocBook, DITA and TEI; on-the-fly XSL rendering (using XSLT and XSL-FO), on-the-fly document validation (based on XML Schema), XSL-FO and CALS table support, multilingual spell checking and availability for Microsoft Windows (2000, XP) and Linux..." See also the following reference.

• [October 14, 2003] Online information system produced from DITA source. Example. [WebSphere combined information center. This information center includes the documentation for IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment 5.0.1 and IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer 5.0.1.]

• [October 13, 2003] "Scenario-Based and Model-Driven Information: Development with XML DITA." By Michael Priestley (IBM Toronto Lab, Markham, Ontario, Canada). Presented at ACM SIGDOC [ACM Special Interest Group for Design of Communications] 2003 (October 12-15, 2003, San Francisco, California, USA). Published in the Proceedings of the 21st Annual International Conference on Documentation. "In this paper I describe how I followed an end-to-end development process in the development of the user's guide and help information for XML DITA, using scenarios to define my information needs and maps to describe my information model. By using technology driven by maps and scenarios, I was able to keep the information focused on user goals and requirements from its inception through to its final form. The paper will also look at how an integrated end-to-end process can help keep information on track through staged delivery of content to ensure early and ongoing feedback, and will look at some future opportunities for further integration in the stages of the information development process. The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML architecture for creating and publishing information, especially technical information. It is based on several key principles: (1) Topic-based information; (2) Information types and domains; (3) The separation of content (topics) from context (maps); (4) Extensibility and customizability; (5) Reuse. DITA was created based on best practices in technical authoring such as task orientation, chunking, information typing, and minimalism. It was also shaped by developments in software architecture, including object-oriented and component-oriented software. Because software and technical information share similar challenges, it is not surprising that similar approaches have emerged in both arenas. However, the similarities are not based on simple application of existing techniques to new areas: the similarities run deep, but are not equivalencies... DITA is an exercise in using technology to support best practices. It is also an opportunity to promote these best practices as part of the education and documentation efforts associated with the architecture's internal release. First we used best practices to define the technology we wanted. Now we are using the technology to help drive adoption of the best practices. Going forward, there are even more opportunities presenting themselves, both for a more completely supportive process within the development of an information set, and across all the information processes associated with software development and education. Ultimately, DITA can be a tool for capturing and driving best practices, not just within information development but across the entire information lifecycle. The challenge will be to realize these opportunities while keeping the architecture flexible enough to allow evolution in the best practices it supports, and open enough to keep the architecture accountable to its users..." [text provided by the author; see the DOI bookmark]

• [October 07, 2003] "Why Use DITA to Produce HTML Deliverables? Overcoming the Limitations of HTML." By John Hunt (User Assistance Architect, IBM), Don Day (Lead DITA Architect, IBM), Erik Hennum (DITA Domain Architect, IBM), Michael Priestley (DITA Specialization Architect, IBM), and Dave A. Schell (Chief Strategist and Tools Lead, IBM). From IBM developerWorks, XML zone. October 7, 2003. ['The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based format for structuring and authoring technical content. This article explores advantages DITA provides for producing HTML content -- including easy global changes, portability through standards, superior linking and Web management, conditional processing, content and design reuse, and better writing through focused content. DITA consolidates all of the benefits in a consistent, overall information architecture that can evolve and grow along with your product information needs and delivery modes, and with the evolution of standard tools for delivering XML as the presentation mechanism.'] The authors address a FAQ like this: Since my output deliverables are exclusively HTML and will stay that way for the foreseeable future, why go the route of creating content in an intermediary XML format and generating HTML? Why not produce HTML directly with an HTML editor? Why go through the extra cycles involved in producing and managing DITA XML content when it seems so much easier to simply write and produce the HTML directly, with tools that were specifically created to support doing that? "DITA leverages the advantages inherent in XML and extends beyond those advantages in the following ways: (1) Easy global changes through customized transforms. With DITA and XSLT, you can update the structure and presentation of an entire information set by applying a consistent, core transform. (2) Portable through standards: Using DITA, product groups and external business partners can easily share and exchange content. (3) Linking and Web management: DITA makes it possible to create and maintain cross-topic links from outside the topic itself; you can apply different sets of links in different situations. (4) Conditional processing: With DITA, you can tag parts of a topic by product, audience, or other characteristics. (5) Reuse: You can reuse topics in different collections using maps, and you can reuse content between topics as well, maintaining common elements like definitions, warnings, and product names in a central place. (6) Focused content and better writing: Topic-based authoring produces better writing... It's possible to achieve some of the above benefits through highly disciplined authoring of HTML and subsequent processing of the authored HTML. However, this quickly becomes a bits-and-pieces process. For example, you might tweak HTML to support a form of conditional processing, but in so doing make it difficult to generate a customized presentation. Then, when you tweak the HTML to improve the presentation, you might need to re-work the content and form of the topic navigation links. XML and DITA overcome this bits-and-pieces problem of HTML. DITA consolidates all of the benefits in a consistent, overall information architecture that can evolve and grow along with your product information needs and delivery modes, as well as the evolution of standard tools for delivering XML as the presentation mechanism..."

• [June 24, 2003] IBM Development Team Publishes Updated DITA Toolkit and Language Reference.   An announcement from Don R. Day (IBM) describes the release of an updated version 1.1.2 toolkit for the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), available from IBM's developerWorks XML Zone. This is a stable version of the toolkit, representing "the culmination of the past year's testing and implementation of the DTDs in IBM's internal authoring and production workbench." The new release includes a 198-page formal DITA Language Reference featuring hyperlinked descriptions of DITA elements, attributes, valid contexts, and examples. An entirely new XML Schema instance of the DITA specialization architecture is supplied. Demonstrations are provided to illustrate specializations for 'FAQ' and 'element reference' info-types and for map-driven delivery contexts for aggregated topics and Eclipse helpsets. Updates to the XSLT transform support consistent usage of a shell interface mirroring the DTD structures. Also provided is documentation for processing parameters and transform tweaks. DITA is "an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. This architecture consists of a set of design principles for creating information-typed modules at a topic level and for using that content in delivery modes such as online help and product support portals on the Web."

• [June 2003] "Moving from Single Sourcing to Reuse with XML DITA." Case Study. By Lori Fisher (Program Director for Data Management User Technology, IBM Corp). In Best Practices [A Publication of the Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM)] Volume 5, Number 3 (June 2003), pages 63-68. "The concepts of single sourcing and information reuse have been talked about for many years in the technical communication community, but few (if any) companies have really succeeded in the full sense of these terms. There are two inhibitors to successful reuse: (1) lack of training in how to design our information to be readily reusable; (2) lack of authoring tools and technology to effectively assist in the mechanics and implementation of reuse. In this article, I examine both of these issues and address a potential solution available by integrating information architecture with an XML DTD in a publicly available offering called DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture). XML technology alone would not be enough to ensure the creation of reusable information. The information must not only be tagged and described (à la XML), but it must also be designed to be reusable. What is needed is an underlying, structured information architecture as the design principle for the content. DITA enables the development of modular information optimized for reuse. DITA includes a set of design principles for creating specific types of information in a highly modular structure. DITA is a set of XML DTDs, with a base that defines tags common to topics and with additional DTDs that build on that base. Together, these DTDs express principles for authoring modular information and for delivering that content in various ways, such as in online help systems or in Web portals or as PDFs. The base XML DTD included with DITA has about a hundred markup elements — not very complex — and most of them are very familiar to anyone who knows SGML or HTML. The key to the DITA architecture is authoring information structured as specific information types, in highly modular chunks called topics. A topic is a discrete piece of information, independent of other topics, covering a specific subject. Topics are categorized as specific information types — task, concept, or reference information. In contrast to an online help panel that might include a mix of information types, such as a conceptual introduction, a list of procedural steps, and a table of reference material, a topic includes only one of those information types. It can be combined with other topics, however, to provide the reader with the variety of information contained on a traditional help panel. The key here is that this topic can then be recombined with other topics in a slightly different context or for a different medium (in a PDF for example), yet the source is written only once. DITA also allows the writer to describe relationships between topics. For example, a writer can describe chronological, frequency, or priority-based relationships among topics..."

• [May 2003] "An XML Architecture for Technical Documentation: Darwin Information Typing Architecture." Presentation by Don Day (Lead DITA Architect, IBM Corp). Tuesday, May 20, 2003. Society for Technical Communication (STC) 50th Annual Conference. May 18-21, 2003. Wyndham Anatole Hotel, Dallas, Texas, USA. "The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML architecture for designing, writing, managing, and publishing technical documentation, whether in print, as online help, or on the Web. It implements the principles of information design, information typing, and information architecture."

• [May 2003] "Achieving Re-Use with DITA, XML and Epic Editor." By Mike Temple (Senior Software Engineer, IBM). Presentation at Arbortext User's Group International (AUGI) 2003. May 7-9, 2003. Adam's Mark Hotel, San Antonio, Texas, USA. Discusses how customizations support DITA's use in a map-based application. "At last year's [2002] AUGI, we presented an introduction to IBM's DITA XML language. In the past year we have made many enhancements to both the DITA language and to the Epic Editor in support of DITA. The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information... This presentation describes DITA, which is based on design principles for creation information-typed modules at a topic level, and for using that content in delivery modes such as online help and product support portals on the web. The presentation describes many of the features of DITA, including: (1) Specialization: This allows our base XML DTD to be expanded as needed. For example, a generic topic can be specialized into a reference topic or a task topic, with very few DTD changes. (2) Reuse via content reference: The XML and our XSL processes allow reuse by reference. For example, a paragraph or list item from one topic can be included at run time in another topic. (3) Automation of linking: Links are defined outside of the topic source, and are dynamically created at run time..."

• [February 20, 2003] "Altova's AUTHENTIC 5 Simplifies Authoring of IBM's DITA XML Format for Technical Documents. AUTHENTIC 5 is First XML Document Editor to Include Integrated Support for IBM's Darwin Information Typing Architecture." - "Altova, industry leader in XML editing tools software today announced new visual document authoring support for IBM's Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) in Altova's free XML Document Editor, AUTHENTIC 5. The new support for DITA, including example files and AUTHENTIC 5 templates to enable visual WYSIWYG editing of DITA documents by business users, is included in AUTHENTIC 5 Release 3 -- available immediately under a free product license. DITA is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information, such as online help and product support portals on the Web. Prior to Altova having developed editing support for DITA, editing of any DITA file was limited to people with a technical understanding of XML syntax. Now, any business user can author DITA-compliant documents through AUTHENTIC 5's intuitive, user-friendly interface, at no cost to the user. 'One of the biggest challenges of realizing the benefits of XML technologies today is providing an easy means for business users to get their documents into an XML format. The new visual templates included with AUTHENTIC 5 provide an easy interface for to creating XML-based DITA documents, without requiring any prior knowledge of XML technologies', said Alexander Falk, President & CEO of Altova Inc. 'The DITA document type is an ideal information storage format because it preserves technical content in a reusable format -- when used in conjunction with Altova's AUTHENTIC 5, it provides the technological foundation for a solution that will enable organizations to better re-use their technical documentation'..."

• [October 2002] "Specialization in DITA: Technology, Process, and Policy." By Michael Priestley (IBM Canada) and Dave Schell (IBM). Presented at ACM [Association for Computing Machinery] SIGDOC 2002, October 20-23, 2002, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Pages 164-176 in Proceedings of the 20th Annual International Conference on Computer Documentation. New York: ACM Press. ISBN:1-58113-543-2. "DITA is an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It is also an architecture for creating new information types and describing new information domains, allowing groups to create very specific, targeted document type definitions using a process called specialization, while at the same time reusing common output transforms and design rules.Specialization provides a way to reconcile the needs for centralized control of major architecture and design with the needs for localized control of group-specific and content-specific guidelines and controls. Specialization allows multiple definitions of content and output to coexist, related through a hierarchy of information types and transforms. This hierarchy lets general transforms know how to deal with new, specific content, and it lets specialized transforms reuse logic from the general transforms. As a result, any content can be processed by any transform, as long as both content and transform are specialization-compliant and part of the same hierarchy. You get the benefit of specific solutions, but you also get the benefit of common standards and shared resources.For some groups, specialization requires a radical move away from centralized processes into a world of negotiated possibilities that introduces many new stakeholders to the information management infrastructure. For other groups, specialization introduces centralization, and, while it provides new opportunities for sharing and reusing logic and design, it also requires new policies and procedures to bring disparate design and development activities into a cohesive, coordinated framework. [Four] previous papers have described in some detail how the technology of specialization works, and how it can be implemented using off-the-shelf tools that are dependent only on base levels of W3C standards (XML 1.0, XSLT 1.0). This paper provides a brief summary of recent changes to DITA specialization, and describes their effects on processes, but concentrates primarily on policy considerations involved in the deployment of a specialization architecture... DITA provides three main ways to extend design or output capabilities: specialization (of information types, domains, and code); customization (of output); and integration (of design subsets). Each of these ways must be supported by strategies for technology, process, and policy, which manage the risks to content and to infrastructure posed by uncontrolled mutation of the specialization hierarchies. Over time, these strategies can be used to manage the evolution of the specialization hierarchies: new information types and domains can be developed to inhabit specific niches in the information ecosystem, evolving as the ecosystem evolves, or preserving their skeletons in the fossil record. Standard and monolithic DTDs are often unable to move quickly enough to respond to changing conditions, and as a result force their users through mass migrations from one standard to another, often at great expense, and often stranding some content beyond retrieval. In contrast, DITA provides a diversity that can cushion against change, as well as a set of processing standards that support evolution without forced migration. While some specializations will always end up extinct, generalization can save the content, and the decoupling of design and process hierarchies can save the infrastructure from the fate of the design. In effect, instead of a series of mass extinction events, DITA provides a more rational way to evolve: pursuing some branches and pruning others, as the needs of your information environment dictate..." Used with permission.

• [October 2002] "Implementing DITA XML in a Production Environment." By Susan G. Carpenter (IBM Corporation). Presented at ACM [Association for Computing Machinery] SIGDOC 2002, October 20-23, 2002, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Pages 17-19 in Proceedings of the 20th Annual International Conference on Computer Documentation. New York: ACM Press. ISBN:1-58113-543-2. "This paper describes one information development team's experience with implementing a prototype XML vocabulary in a production environment. This implementation included the migration of pre-existing content, the writing of XSLT and Perl scripts to direct migration and production, and the training of team members... In the fall of 2001, the documentation team for the IBM WebSphere Application Server producti agreed to participate in a deployment pilot activity for the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), a publicly available XML vocabulary that originated in IBM's XML Workgroup. Our primary goal was to gain productivity and flexibility by separating source and delivery formats. The WebSphere development environment is extremely dynamic. Changes to delivery requirements as well as to product content occur right up until the product is released on IBM's Internet product site. We faced additional challenges in our current release: Improving the usability of the information center in every aspect from the layout of content through the selection of search engine. We also needed to achieve greater consistency of content coverage, which meant analyzing and restructuring nearly every bit of content. We looked to DITA to help us re-implement our content such that writers could develop content as other team members sorted out the evolving presentation and delivery requirements. In addition, we looked to XSLT to help us do fast prototyping in the planning stage and eventually to do the 'heavy lifting' to transform DITA articles into finished help and information center articles... Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML vocabulary developed for article-based user assistance. DITA promotes semantic coding primarily by information type; article level container elements include <concept>, <task>, and <reference>. An undifferentiated container element (<topic>) is also available. DITA enables its users to adapt generalized markup (for example, the reference type) for more specific uses (for example, an API reference type)... Our processing scripts relied on: (1) A Perl interpreter that was part of our existing SGML tooling performed global string manipulations during HTML and IBMIDDoc migrations; (2) The Xalan-Java tool from the Apache Software Foundation that performs XSLT transformations. The binary distribution for Xalan also includes Xerces, an XML parser... Certain support in the XSLT scripts required the use of Xalanspecific extensions to the XSLT recommendation. Whenever possible, Xalan-specific code was segregated and kept to a minimum, keeping open our options for another XSLT engine..." Used with permission.

• [October 2002] "Using Javadoc and XML to Produce API Reference." By Donald M. Leslie (Apache Software Foundation, XML Project). Presented at ACM [Association for Computing Machinery] SIGDOC 2002, October 20-23, 2002, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Pages 104-109 (with 16 references) in Proceedings of the 20th Annual International Conference on Computer Documentation. New York: ACM Press. ISBN:1-58113-543-2. "The creation of API reference documentation and its integration into larger documentation sets present a number of challenges. This paper explores a strategy for using Javadoc, the primary mechanism for generating Java API documentation, in conjunction with an XML infrastructure, to improve the quality of API reference material and its integration into product documentation sets... Having recently written an XML doclet to produce DITA XML, I am pleased to verify that setting up an XML doclet is a relatively straightforward process. The rapidly evolving XML infrastructure that is just as freely available as Javadoc provides tools that simplify that process of generating and validating XML. The DITA specialization scheme makes DITA XML a particularly attractive form of XML to generate. Procedures and stylesheets that are established to transform DITA documents into HTML, PDF, or whatever, will be able to handle the Javadoc XML output, even if they are not aware of some of the specializations that the Javadoc includes. As a result, the process of adjusting publishing schemes originally designed to handle other kinds of documentation (conceptual topics, task-oriented procedures, non-API reference topics, etc.) will require minimal adjustment to fully take advantage of the Java API reference specialization that DITA Javadoc represents... The proposal outlined in this paper clearly involves a certain amount of setup: a doclet working in conjunction with an XML transformer and parser, and a set of DTDs and/or schemas, and stylesheets for transforming the XML to the desired presentation formats. This paper has suggested some avenues to explore in implementing such a setup. Substantial design work remains. Work is underway at IBM to complete a DITA XML infrastructure for authoring and publishing user documentation. Similar endeavors as doubtless taking place elsewhere. To the degree that Java API documentation comes into play, an XML doclet is a critical tool in these efforts. Design and coordination issues will doubtless arise during the process of integrating Javadoc output into larger documentation sets. The sooner documentation groups become actively engaged in this endeavor, the sooner we can confront these issues. But we can also look forward to establishing some very efficient processes for creating easily customized documentation sets, and to producing well-organized and comprehensive API documentation that I am more than confident will elicit eager attention and appreciation from a variety of sources. A number of tools similar to Javadoc exist for other programming languages. For example, I have used Doc++ and Doxygen to generate C++ reference documentation, and other tools like these certainly exist. The success we achieve in using Javadoc to generate XML API documentation is bound to stimulate parallel endeavors with these other tools and languages. In short, technical communicators face interesting and challenging work on a variety of fronts implementing some radically new and improved systems for producing the high-quality API documentation that application developers need..." Used with permission.

• [September 2002] "Workshop on Specialization." ZIP archive with samples and instructions. Session by Michael Priestley (IBM Canada), given at CASCON 2002 [IBM Centers for Advanced Studies]. Files: wizard-domain.ent; wizard-domain.mod; wiztask.dtd; wiztask.mod; wiztaskdisplay.xsl; mywiztask.xml.

• [August 09, 2002] "Specialization and Modularization in DITA." By Erik Hennum (IBM), Michael Priestley (IBM Canada), and Dave Schell (IBM). Paper presented at the Extreme Markup Languages Conference 2002 (August 4-9, 2002. Hotel Wyndham Montréal, Montréal, Canada). See also the presentation slides. "DITA is an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It is also an architecture for creating new information types and describing new information domains, allowing groups to create very specific, targeted document type definitions using a process called specialization while at the same time reusing common output transforms and design rules. Specialization provides a way to reconcile the needs for centralized control of major architecture and design with the needs for localized control of group-specific and content-specific guidelines and controls. Specialization allows multiple definitions of content and output to co-exist, related through a hierarchy of information types and transforms. This hierarchy lets general transforms know how to deal with new, specific content, and it lets specialized transforms reuse logic from the general transforms. As a result, any content can be processed by any transform, as long as both content and transform are specialization-compliant, and part of the same hierarchy. You get the benefit of specific solutions, but you also get the benefit of common standards and shared resources." [alt, cache]

• [May 15, 2002]   IBM's Darwin Architecture Supports Enhancements for Domain Specialization, Content Reuse, and Linking Logic.    Communiqués from Don Day and Michael Priestley of IBM describe new features in the 2002-05 update of IBM's XML-Based Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). The DITA XML-based architecture "provides a way for documentation authors and architects to create collections of typed topics that can be easily assembled into various delivery contexts. Topic specialization is the process by which authors and architects can define topic types, while maintaining compatibility with existing style sheets, transforms, and processes. The new topic types are defined as an extension, or delta, relative to an existing topic type, thereby reducing the work necessary to define and maintain the new type." Improving upon the original release of March 2001, DITA v1.0 features "a logical extension of specialization that has now been incorporated into DITA: the ability to extend existing content markup to represent domains of specialized markup that are common across particular sets of typed topics (hardware vs. software, for example)." The DITA design has a unified content reuse mechanism which enables one to combine several topics into a single document: "an element can replace itself with the content of a like element elsewhere, either in the current topic or in a separate topic that shares the same content models. The distinction between reusable content and reusing content, which is enshrined in the file entity scheme, disappears: any element with an ID, in any DITA topic, is reusable by 'conref' transclusion. The linking logic is also now supports type checking and takes advantage of the short description element to provide progressive disclosure."

• [May, 2002] "Architecting Content for DITA." By Julio J. Vazquez (D&ID Marketing & Sales, IBM). Technical Report. Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Reference: TR 29.xxxx. May, 2002. 18 pages. "This article describes how an author can apply the DITA architecture when developing information for a product. It lists the information types defined in DITA and a reasonable approach for analyzing content to fit the types. The article does not teach the structure of the language but focuses on the concepts behind the architecture and how to change your paradigm to embrace the architecture. There are a few examples included that are based on the language as it stands today..." [cache]

• [February 28, 2002] "The Business Value of XML and the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA)." By Dave A. Schell and John P. Hunt (IBM). Edited by Phyllis A. Sharon. February 28, 2002. 24 pages. ['This paper is a product of the IBM User Technology Workgroup on XML. Responsible for the development of DITA, the Workgroup consists of 30 technical professionals who have been working on DITA since 1999.'] "Information developers at IBM face increasing pressure both to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction and reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Total Cost of Deployment (TCD) of information supporting IBM products. As a result, IBM Corporate Information Development formed the IBM User Technology Workgroup on XML to look at how to reduce the cost of ownership and deployment. After reexamining IBM's basic approaches to creating and delivering product technical information, the Workgroup recommended that IBM move away from a monolithic document model and toward a topic-based reuse model. To respond to the demands for more efficient TCO/TCD, as well as provide better access to product content, the Workgroup developed an XML-based information architecture called DITA, which is short for Darwin Information Typing Architecture. Using this architecture uniquely positions IBM to take advantage of XML to deliver content to users. DITA improves the overall flexibility of information designs, facilitates better writing, ensures information completeness, and promotes sharing and reuse, both within and across product development teams. Using DITA, IBM will reap significant long-term TCO and TCD benefits that will better position us for continued growth in increasingly competitive worldwide markets..."

• [February 12, 2002] "Experiences with an XML Topic Architecture (DITA)." Presentation) by Don R. Day (IBM) and Jamie Roberts (IBM Canada). WinWriters Conference 2002. 18 slides. DITA is no longer a prototype: it has been published and updated. Being standards based, it is not platform-dependent. It has many potential uses since markup is being separated from presentation. It supports different rendering models. It features clarity of markup and multiple workflows.

• [December 2001] "Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) ." A research note by Namahn (Namahn bvba Consultancy, Brussels). December 2001. ['The purpose of this research note is to introduce the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and highlight its relationship to other information architectures like DocBook and Information Mapping.'] "DocBook is a robust, proven architecture, widely implemented and well documented. It pays off right away. That is, you get immediate benefits. DITA is the contender. Challenging and promising, by taking the best out of DocBook (the semantic names and attributes) and Information Mapping (topical writing an information typing), and pushing it one stage further by adding flexibility. Major drawback: there is still a lot to be build and documented. Information Mapping has a hard time competing with DocBook and DITA, not only because it is proprietary, but also because it is mainly an authoring environment (focusing on Word-templates and writing principles), rather than an overall information architecture (like DocBook and DITA) dealing with a much broader scope of issues (like linking, search, transforming and publicing information)..."

• [October 2001] DITA XML: A Reuse by Reference Architecture for Technical Documentation." By Michael Priestley (IBM Canada). Presented ACM SIGDOC 2001, October 21-24, 2001, Sante Fe, New Mexico, USA. Pages 152-156 in Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference on Computer Documentation. ISBN: 1-58113-295-6. "The Darwin Information Typing Architecture is an XML architecture for producing and reusing technical information. DITA promises the following: (1) Scalable reuse, so you can reuse content in any number of delivery contexts simultaneously without complicating the source (2) Descriptive markup, so you can use markup that describes your information in terms your customers need (3) Interchangeability, so you can treat specialized markup as if it were general, getting reuse of tools and processes defined at more general levels of descriptiveness (4) Process inheritance, so you can reuse existing process logic in your specialized processes. It accomplishes these goals by applying the principle of reuse by reference to the dimensions of content, design, and process within a technical communications workflow... DITA's basic principles are as follows: [1] Topic orientation: DITA focuses on the topic as the smallest independently maintainable unit of reuse. This allows authors to focus on writing topics that efficiently and completely cover a particular subject, or answer a particular question, without dwelling on the various places the topic might end up being read. [2] Information typing: DITA focuses on information types as a way to describe content independent of how that content is delivered. Instead of creating chapters and appendixes, authors can focus on writing concepts, tasks, and reference topics using structures and semantics that remain valid regardless of how the information reaches the reader. [3] Specialization: DITA allows authors to create more specialized information types, so that the structures and semantics of the information are as specific as they need to be for a particular audience [4] Inheritable processes: DITA-aware processes, such as publishing and translation, work automatically on more specialized types, and can also be specialized themselves... DITA's reuse architecture accommodates a continuum of content reuse, from maximally reusable simplified topics through book-like richly annotated nested topic structures. On the design and process, it supports reuse of constraints and markup in a type hierarchy, and reuse of typed content in a typeaware transform hierarchy, adapting object-oriented inheritance to the data- and document-centric world of XML and technical documentation. The result is an end-to-end architecture that lets you create specialized document types, with the markup and consistency appropriate to your users' domain, without losing access to wider realms of transforms, processes, and interchange..." Also from ACM Digital Library.

• [October 2001] "Writing, Designing, and Processing Information in the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA)." By Michael Priestley (IBM Canada). Presented at SIGDOC 2001. 1-page overview.

• [October 2001] Transforming Documentation from the XML Doctypes Used for the Apache Website to DITA." By Donald M. Leslie (Cambridge Advanced Technology Group, IBM Research). Presented ACM SIGDOC 2001, October 21-24, 2001, Sante Fe, New Mexico, USA. Pages 157-164 (with 12 references) in Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference on Computer Documentation. ISBN: 1-58113-295-6. "A primary factor behind the enormous interest in XML is the support it provides for transforming documents to meet the needs of information-processing applications as well as human readers working with HTML, print, and other presentation media. This case study reviews the issues we confronted, the tools we implemented, and the procedures we adopted to transform a documentation set from one XML document type to another, and from XML to HTML and Adobe PDF. The documentation set for Xalan, the Apache XSL transformer based largely on code donated by Lotus/IBM, is written in XML, using document types shared by the projects on the Apache XML website. To present Xalan reference releases to IBM project groups, the Cambridge Advanced Technology Group has set up build procedures to transform the Xalan XML documentation to DITA, an extensible XML information typing architecture currently under development in IBM. After verifying that the DITA output conforms to its declared document type, the build publishes the DITA documentation set as HTML and as PDF... This case study demonstrates that it is feasible to set up an automated process to transform a collection of documents from one XML document type to another. This same process may be extended to also generate HTML and PDF output for readers. A servlet may be used to transform XML to HTML on the server in response to user requests. In the course of carrying out this case study, we recognized a common pattern involved in transforming a set of XML documents to a set of HTML documents with a shared table of contents. To simplify this process we implemented support for a pipeDocumdent extension element that can be embedded in the stylesheet that generates the table of contents and used to perform the transformations required to transform each source document to the desired output. We used this same pipeDocument extension element in an otherwise empty stylesheet to merge our DITA XML documents into a book and transform the book into XSL formatting objects to provide input for generating a PDF document. We also created a simple Validate tool to verify that our XML output conforms to its specified document type. As XML usage accelerates, we believe other documentation groups and website managers can exploit and extend the preliminary infrastructure we have created in our endeavor to transform the Xalan documentation set from Apache XML to DITA XML and from DITA XML to HTML and PDF..." See also from the ACM Digital Library.

• [October 2001] "Open-Source Documentation: In Search of User-Driven, Just-in-Time Writing." By Erik Berglund (Linköping University, Sweden) and Michael Priestley (IBM Toronto Lab, Canada). Presented ACM SIGDOC 2001, October 21-24, 2001, Sante Fe, New Mexico, USA. Pages 132-141 in Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference on Computer Documentation. ISBN: 1-58113-295-6. "Iterative development models allow developers to respond quickly to changing user requirements, but place increasing demands on writers who must handle increasing amounts of change with everdecreasing resources. In the software development world, one solution to this problem is open-source development: allowing the users to set requirements and priorities by actually contributing to the development of the software. This results in just-in-time software improvements that are explicitly user-driven, since they are actually developed by users. In this article we will discuss how the open source model can be extended to the development of documentation. In many opensource projects, the role of writer has remained unchanged: documentation development remains a specialized activity, owned by a single writer or group of writers, who work as best they can with key developers and frequently out-of-date specification documents. However, a potentially more rewarding approach is to open the development of the documentation to the same sort of community involvement that gives rise to the software: using forums and mailing lists as the tools for developing documentation, driven by debate and dialogue among the actual users and developers..."

• [October 2001] "Taking Advantage of XML to Improve Information: Darwin Information Typing Architecture." Presentation given by Dave Schell (IBM), Michael Priestley (IBM Canada), and Gretchen Hargis (IBM). Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM) Best Practices, 2001. Fulfilling the promise of XML: DITA. Separate content from context for reuse. Maintain compatibility with standards by using a base and then using specialization [Minimize time for DTD development; create specific markup quickly and cheaply; support corporate innovation]. Create an alternative for interchange by larger non-IBM community... Principles of DITA: Topic orientation (the topic is the smallest independently maintainable unit of reuse); Information types (information types are a delivery-independent way to describe content); Inheritable design: (pecialized information types can be created from a more general type of topic); Inheritable process: (DITA-aware processes, such as publishing and translation, can also be specialized themselves)..."

• [August 2001] "DITA: An XML-based Technical Documentation Authoring and Publishing Architecture." By Michael Priestley (IBM Canada), Gretchen Hargis (IBM), and Susan Carpenter (IBM). In Technical Communication Volume 48, Number 3 (August 2001), pages 352-367. "The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is a technical documentation authoring and publishing architecture that is based on principles of modular reuse and extensibility. This article discusses how DITA affects how we write, how we design, and how we process technical documentation, and what benefits the DITA approach can deliver that traditional documentation strategies cannot." [Reprinted with permission from Technical Communication, the journal of the Society for Technical Communication (STC).

• [August 03, 2001] "Status and Directions of XML in Technical Documentation in IBM: DITA." By David A. Schell, Michael Priestley, John P. Hunt, and Don R. Day. Paper presented at IBM's 'Make IT Easy 2001 Conference' [and voted one of the best papers at the year 2001 conference]. "For the past two years a workgroup inside IBM's User Technology community has been working on creating a XML architecture for the next generation information deliverables. In this paper we describe the current state of that work, the status of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture, and our directions for XML. We also discuss our guiding principles for our work on XML and our activities related to validation and proof-of-concept... In March of 2001, IBM released for public awareness and commentary a new architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) deals with the complexity of information at two levels: it goes beyond book-oriented DTDs by addressing typed data at the topic level, and it features specialization, which allows derivation of new topic types (and their specialized vocabularies) from base types. Topics of any type can be assembled into books, webs, and helpsets without rewriting, owing again to the specialization methodology, which allows new vocabularies to be processed reliably by previous tools. DITA was developed by a team led by Don R. Day, Michael Priestley, and Dave A. Schell of IBM. The popular hype surrounding XML is that it promises greater reuse, semantic specificity, and interchangeability. Out of the hundreds of XML applications currently proposed or deployed, very few deliver on all three promises, because the promises are basically in conflict with each other. For example, in most XML applications the more specific the vocabulary, the less interchangeable the documents (a <var> programming variable element is not likely to be required in DTDs that support simple memos, therefore it would have to be transformed if the content were reused in a memo). DITA helps deliver on these promises of XML by having base semantics from which new vocabularies are progressively defined, and this same base semantic continues to support the processing for the new vocabularies. This architectural feature ensures that new element names can always be associated to existing processors to produce contextually correct results. Likewise, new elements can always be transformed back to their base types in situations where the specificity needs to be relaxed, or transformed to related vocabularies derived from the same base semantics in cases where documents are interchanged between companies that use different names for similar elements or attributes. Semantic specificity based on derivation has other advantages. Derivation avoids the sort of semantic overloading that may occur in other DTDs when an unrelated existing element is used as a base for a new semantic. With no derivation architecture, such newly defined elements may be used in contexts that have nothing to do with the semantics of that new element. Derivation ensures that an entire context for a new vocabulary is properly represented, and that the content models are therefore reasonable. Moreover, one can limit the number of elements in new content models so that fewer nonapplicable elements are visible. This is a tremendous authoring aid! In effect, the choices available for writers within a particular specialized vocabulary need only be those that are appropriate for that context." See also: IBM's Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). [source]

• [Summer 2001] "Managing Web Relationships With Document Structures." By Michael Priestley. [PRACTICE NOTE] Markup Languages: Theory & Practice 2/3 (Summer 2000) 235-254 (with 8 references). ISSN: 1099-6622 [MIT Press]. Author's affiliation: IBM Toronto Software Development Laboratory; Email: mpriestley@acm.org. "Navigation and links can be made easier for an author to manage when they are collected into separate relationship documents, or navigation maps, which use the same semantics for describing relationships as are used to structure content models in other documents in their domain. By reusing content structuring semantics for relationship management, the relationships captured in a relationship document can be accessed and manipulated through the document's document object model (DOM). By layering multiple relationship documents with different structuring paradigms, an author can create and manage a multidimensional web, and avoid display issues or comprehension problems associated with handling that complexity in a single document. This paper describes a prototype project that exercised these principles against a simple web... While this process is probably not suitable for webs containing more than a few thousand documents, or for webs with various or unorganized content, it is highly suitable for relatively cohesive, self-contained webs, such as the user support webs for a single product. For authoring help webs and similar constrained collections, this approach reduced the complexity of relationship management to a simple, useful, and intuitive process that melded well with the existing web authoring process. While the prototype dealt with simple HTML documents, the process would work equally well with more variegated XML content. Adding further semantics and structures to the document domain, and by implication to the relationship document, would simply introduce additional, or different, types and roles. Because the relationships are expressed in terms of DOMs (the DOM for each navigation map), constraints on allowable relationships should be relatively easy to express using a DTD. For example, the DTD could enforce a maximum nesting level (as this conference paper format does for subheadings). This is certainly not a one-size-fits-all solution. However, it works well in at least one case, and has comparatively low entry costs in terms of learning curve and technological requirements, since it uses standard HTML structures. This should make it a useful starting point for some well-architected web sites." A related version of this paper is available online in HTML format; see "Managing web relationships with document structures." Together with Don R. Day and Dave A. Schell, Michael Priestley is a principal in the design and development of IBM's Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA).

• [April 2001] "Status and Direction of XML in Information Development in IBM: DITA." By Dave Schell (IBM), Michael Priestley (IBM Canada), John Hunt (Lotus), and Don Day (IBM). Presented at Make IT Easy [April] 2001. "For the past two years, a workgroup inside IBM's User Technology community has been working on creating an XML architecture for the next generation of technical documentation. In this paper we describe the current state of that work, the status of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture, and our directions for XML. We also discuss our guiding principles for our work on XML and our activities related to validation and proof-of-concept."

• [March 21, 2001] "IBM's Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA)." IBM developerWorks has published an article by Don R. Day, Michael Priestley, and Dave A. Schell on IBM's XML-based 'DITA' architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. DITA DTDs, style sheets, and sample documents are available online. The article surveys the development of DITA by a cross-company workgroup representing user assistance teams from IBM, Lotus, and Tivoli, and explains the decision not to simply convert IBMIDDoc, or to use an existing XML DTD such as DocBook, or TEI, or XHTML; after all, 'IBM, with millions of pages of documentation for its products, has its own very complex SGML DTD, IBMIDDoc, which has supported this documentation since the early 1990s'. In DITA, the 'topic' is the basic architectural unit: "a topic is a unit of information that describes a single task or concept or reference item. The information's category (concept, task, reference) is its information type. Typed topics are easily managed within content management systems as reusable, stand-alone units of information. The XML-based Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an end-to-end architecture for creating and delivering modular technical information. The architecture consists of a set of design principles for creating information-typed topic modules, and for using that content in various ways, such as online help and product support portals on the Web. At the heart, the DITA is an XML document type definition (DTD) that expresses many of these design principles. The architecture, however, is the defining part of this proposal for technical information; the DTD, or any schema based on it, is just an instantiation of the design principles of the architecture. The IBM workgroup developed the architecture collaboratively during 2000 through postings to a database and weekly teleconferences; they are offering the architecture on IBM's developerWorks Web site as an alternative XML-based documentation system, designed to exploit XML as its encoding format."

• [March 2001] "Developing XML-based User Assistance at IBM and Lotus." Presentation given by Don R. Day (IBM) and John Hunt (Lotus) at WinWriters Conference 2001. 33 slides. "DITAbase is the base DTD that contains the main topic definitions: topic (generic, broadest), concept, reference, and task. Specialization involves defining a new authoring DTD using specific naming and constraints on prior content models. A topic is the core information unit in the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA): 'A unit of information that is complete enough to describe a single task, concept, or reference item.' An information type defines the role of a topic..."

• "DITA Editor Classifications." Information about Serna and Morphon XML-Editor under revision.