Presenters:

JoAnn Hackos, Comtech Services, Inc.,Bryan Schnabel, Tektronix, Inc. & Rodolfo M. Raya, Maxprograms

Abstract:

The addition of DITA into the mainstream for documentation is causing exciting advances in the way information is authored, organized, accessed, shared, and published. For the first time, a system for topic-based publishing exists that is supported by tools, best practices, and user communities. One of the exciting ROI factors people consider is the savings in translation. But often, that savings is difficult to find due to the paradox. The paradox is that DITA is very strong because it lets authors create, manage, reuse, and publish 10s, 100s, 1000s of topics. However managing the translation of 10s, 100s, 1000s of topics adds unexpected overhead to the translators. Enter XLIFF. XLIFF is also an OASIS open standard. It is the open standard for Localization and Translation interchange. Attend this presentation and demonstration to see how XLIFF solves the paradox.

JoAnn will give the “view from the DITA Adoption Chair.” She will offer a concise overview of the strengths of DITA for creating, managing, reusing, and publishing information. She will also outline the degree to which this is enhanced with DITA 1.2 And Bryan will give the “view from the XLIFF Chair.” Bryan will elaborate on the features XLIFF brings to the table in order to manage those many topics in a concise, ubiquitous, standardized way for the translators. He will explain how XLIFF works and how the tools on a translator’s desktop support XLIFF.

Then comes the demonstrations. Attendees will see that solutions range from the ‘vanilla’ open source entry level, to the advanced ‘tutty-fruity’ commercial software level. Bryan will demonstrate how a basic DITA project can be encapsulated into XLIFF via his open source tool, translated, and then transformed back into DITA. Then for a more full-featured demonstration Rodolfo will demonstrate a more robust transformation using the commercial tool, Swordfish.