DITA and Linux

[tamaranth]

Does anyone have any comments / recommendations concerning tools for creating / editing / organising DITA-based projects? We are primarily Linux-based but if the best solution is a Windows app then the bullet will be bitten.

I have a couple of weeks to evaluate DITA and associated editing packages, as well as speccing the conversion from current Muse-based docs, so all input gratefully received!

Comments

Not really ....

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

... we started looking at the DITA extension to XMetaL Author but the guy doing that decided to quit instead!

[damienw]

heh. googling for dita and muse is not immediately very helpful :-)

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

pah to google. Can google for anything. Want trustworthy opinion. Or, failing that ... <g>

[damienw]

oh, quite. i was looking for context for me; obviously wikipedia is the right place for ded-ignorant curious folks, but oh well. now i know more about dita von teese, so not a complete loss.

DITA

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

It's a way of cataloging data (mostly written documents) so that you can reuse those bits again.

Say you were a big communications company that produced dozens or hundreds of network switches, routers etc. that were available around the world.

You might have some standard text for each country about electrical safety, you might have some standard text about what an "IP Packet" was ... etc. etc.

So when you put together a manual for the ABC1215g switch, you could take a bit from here, a bit from there, some additional specific text and produce a manual. And if anyone ever updated the electrical safety text, then every manual that used that section would get the update the next time it was printed.

Sometimes even just pulling in standard glossary entries can be useful.

Or as IBM (the creators of DITA) say
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (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. This document is a roadmap for DITA: what it is and how it applies to technical documentation.
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-dita1/

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

The wikipedia page for DITA yeilds http://dita-ot.sourceforge.net/. No idea if it's much cop, I was only there to work out what DITA stood for in the first place!