We have launched a prototype of a Help-style interface to key OASIS and other DITA documents at http://www.ditainfocenter.com.

A help interface means it has the classic two panes with table of contents (TOC), index, and search views in the left pane and topics in the right.

The new DITA Infocenter is a demonstration of end-to-end DITA publishing. All the DITA source files for the Architecture Specification and the Language Specification were built as Eclipse Help and are serving from an Eclipse server at DITAUsers.org.

The idea is to produce a DITA Infocenter that combines major resources for DITA in a single searchable interface - which at the same time is a demonstration of DITA publishing.

Anna van Raaphorst and her husband/partner Richard H. (Dick) Johnson, principals at VR Communications, Inc., are the authors of the DITA OT User Guide. They are preparing a new version supporting DITA 1.1 with an expected release next week. We will compile their DITA source files into the DITA Infocenter.  (Anna and Dick presented their work at the April meeting of the Boston DITA Users Group.)
 
Some more background:
 
1) The 1.0 Specifications on the OASIS site are flat html files. When you link to a topic, there is no link back to the TOC. Robert Anderson has fixed that in the 1.1 Specs. Individual files have a return to main page link. But it's still plain html.
http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/CD01/langspec/ditaref-type.html
 
2) Scott Prentice has put the Language Spec in a frameset and plans to add search to it soon.
http://ditamap.com/ditaref2.php
 
3) gotAPI.com has put the Language Spec in a frameset with a most marvelous progressive search. (This is from the team developing DITA Storm).
http://www.gotapi.com/maps/DITA.html
 
So why should DITA Users do something different with all this fine work underway?
1) We have just demonstrated a completely web-hosted publishing path from DITA original sources (edited with DITA Storm) to XHTML, PDF, and now Eclipse Help output.
 
2) Members can compile Help from one of their sample docsets (e.g., Comtech Services' Comstar and IBM's Garage and Grocery docsets) and it appears as a book in our DITA Users Infocenter. They can limit the search scope to their book.
http://www.ditausers.org/eclipse
 
3) We would like a more public demonstration of DITA end-to-end Eclipse Help with the major DITA resources as content.
 
4) We wanted it to be a classic Help interface with TOC, Index, and full-text Search.
 
I recently studied the leading HAT tools which are tip-toeing toward XML and DITA.
http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=35804
 
And I imported html versions of  the Language Spec into RoboHelp as a demo.
http://www.ditausers.org/oasis
http://www.ditausers.org/oasis/flash


I find the Eclipse Help version is much more satisfactory. Please suggest other key DITA documents that should be added to the DITA Infocenter knowledge base.
 
Bob Doyle