Allowing mixed content (text and inline tags) to be direct children of structural elements such as section creates usability problems during authoring and adds complexity to transformations. Mixed content in these contexts is not appropriate for authoring. However, this shortcoming does not appear to be the result of an oversight on the part of the DITA architects. Instead, it appears to be an engineering tradeoff that was made facilitate specialization. Allowing mixed content to appear adds a great deal of flexibility to the information architect's toolbox when specializing.

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The irondog1970 poses a very interesting issue "I imagine a transition from our current writing style to a DITA-based system would take 2 years. And that's a minimum" in Now reading up,  that I hope others will respond to.

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I've got the recordings of a two-day workshop sponsored by PTC last year available - thanks are due to IBM for providing my time, PTC for recording the workshops, and to OASIS for hosting the recordings and sample files:

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I have decided to start reading up on DITA using Linton's and Bruski's book Introduction to DITA. I have also had a talk with our resident XML guru Ed, and he supports the idea of moving our documentation to DITA.

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I'll be speaking at two events this month:

• The DITA Online Summit June 7th
  (http://www.pubsnet.com/courses/dita_summit.htm)
  I'll be kicking off the summit with an introduction to DITA, followed by DITA in-depth presentations and case studies from a whole bunch of good folks, including Jen Linton of Comtech Services (author of the DITA Users Guide), Bill Rabkin of Idiom, and Jody Bookless of Autodesk. It looks like a good mix of subjects and case studies, and it's not too late to register.
• The X-Pubs XML Publishing Conference in Gatwick, England June 20-21
  (http://x-pubs.com/)
  I believe I'll be providing a short kickoff here, followed by a demo of specialization on day 1 and an overview of DITA and integration possibilities for day 2. A solid schedule with keynotes from both JoAnn Hackos and Ann Rockley - looking forward to crossing the pond (I'm Canadian) and meeting more DITA users from outside North America.

As a side note, I finally got my T-shirts from CafePress (unfortunately too late to show off at the STC, but in time for the DITA Online Summit, where no one can see them). They look pretty good, especially the golf shirt, even if I don't play golf.

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