The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is "an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways." (An XML Architecture for Technical Documentation: The Darwin Information Typing Architecture)
It's is the next big thing in technical documentation, because of the ability to reuse and repurpose the same content for different deliverable types and for deliverables for different audiences and products. This saves time and money.
Its modular, topic-based approach also means that significant cost savings can be made in translation--when changes are made, only the topics that have changed need to be re-translated, rather than an entire manual.
DITA can also be customized while maintaining compatibility with the base DTD and with the processing tools.
It was created by IBM, and has already been adopted by a number of large companies, including Adobe, Autodesk, ATI, Sybase, and Nokia. Other big name members of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee include Intel, Boeing, Sun, Oracle, and the US Department of Defense.
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- DITA Open Toolkit
- The Open Toolkit transforms DITA content into deliverable formats, such as XHTML, online Help, PDF, RTF, and man pages.
It includes the DITA DTDs and schemas. - Javascript TOC Plugin
- Shawn McKenzie's plugin for the Open Toolkit. It generates a really nice-looking TOC for your XHTML output.
Resources
- ComServ's DITA User Guide
- So far, this is about the only comprehensive book about DITA that has been published. (Disclaimer-I have not read it.)
- Cover Pages: DITA
- One of the most comprehensive lists of DITA resources there is.
- XML.org's DITA Focus Area
- The official OASIS DITA "community gathering place".
- ditamap.com
- Another comprehensive resource list.
Its versions of the DITA Language Reference and Architectural Specification Reference are easier to use than the originals.
White Papers and Articles
- Planning for DITA Success: How to Set Up the Right Team and the Right Strategy
- Part 1 of the XMetaL/Rockley whitepaper on preparing for the move to DITA.
- Planning for DITA Success Part Two: How to Deploy DITA, Step-By-Step
- Part 2 of the XMetaL/Rockley whitepaper on preparing for the move to DITA.
- Linking DITA Topics through Relationship Tables
- Relationship tables allow you to explicitly specify the relationships between different topics. This article explains the subject well.
Real-World Examples
- Apache Derby
- Apache Derby is an open-source relational database, implemented in Java. All its documentation is written in DITA. Because it is open-source, you can download the source DITA XML files (but you will need a Subversion client, such as TortoiseSVN to download them).
- Eclipse
- The Eclipse project uses DITA for its documentation. See the Initial DITA Contribution section for links to the DITA sources.
- IBM WebSphere Application Server
- The Help for IBM's WebSphere Application Server was created in DITA.
- Adobe Creative Suite
- The Help for Adobe Creative Suite 2 was created in DITA (as described here and here). It consists of over 110,000 pages, and was translated into 14 languages. To view the Help, you can download and install a free trial of one of the Creative Suite applications.
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