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| DITA Newsletter | Volume 1, Issue 7, February, 2008 |
| Features in this issue | (see the web version at www.ditanewsletter.com) |
- DITA User Group Meetings
- DITA Maturity Model
- Refresh Software SR2 CMS
- Another DITA SharePoint Solution
- SiberSafe now has SaaS option
- DITA Users Growing Fast - now 475 members
- Upcoming DITA Events
DITA User Group Meetings
Tuesday February 12 6:30 (networking), 7:00 (presentation):.
Eliot Kimber will present his "DITA Quick Start"
Eliot has given his real-time specialization tutorial to DITA user groups in Austin, TX and Boulder, CO. Don't miss this extraordinary learning opportunity. Check out Eliot's presentation style at www.ditausers.org/tutorials/basics/kimber/
Place: Endeca Technologies
101 Main Street, 10th floor
Cambridge, MA
Visit the DITA.XML.org User Group page to RSVP before Monday Feb. 11.
Central Texas DITA Users Group
Wednesday February 27, 2007 7:00 - 9:00 pm Central CST:.
Ann Gentle of BMC will speak on "What does DITA have to do with Wiki? — Part 2"
Presenters:
Lisa Dyer - Lombardi Software
Alan Porter - Quadralay WebWorks
During the September 2007 meeting, an ultra-condensed overview of topics discussed during the 2007 Best Practices Conference revealed an area of strong interest in the CTDUG community: is there a way to use Wikis to capture DITA content? Anne Gentle of www.justwriteclick.com fame put together a two-session deep-dive into this exciting area of expertise.
Research Triangle Park DITA Users Group
Wednesday, February 27 at 5:30-6:30 PM
The RTP DUG is being revived. They will meet at
Place: Systems Documentation, Inc.
1005 Slater Road, Suite 220
Durham, NC, 27703
Contact Kris Eberlein (keberlein at sdicorp.com) for more information.
Silicon Valley DITA Interest Group
Wednesday, February 13 at 7:00pm PST:
Presenter: Nenad Furtula of Bluestream.
Topic: Using DITA with XDocs XML CMS
Location: NetAppliance. 495 E. Java Drive Bldg 3, Santa Cruz conference room Sunnyvale, CA 94089 (Google Map)
Toronto DITA User Group
Thursday, February 7 at 7:00pm EST:
Presenter: Michael Priestley, DITA Architect at IBM.
Topic: What's new in DITA 1.1, concentrating on reuse capabilities.
Location: IBM Software Lab, 8200 Warden Ave Markham ON (nearest major intersection is Hwy 7 and Warden)
DITA Maturity Model
Amber Swope of JustSystems, Inc. and Michael Priestley of IBM Corporate User Technologies have authored a whitepaper that answers these DITA questions: How do you know where to begin? How do you plan for and manage the required investment and associated ROI? How do you move the enterprise content strategy from the back room to the board room and develop a framework for success?
See the events section below for a webcast on this topic.
Refresh Software SR2 Content Management Solution
Refresh Software SR2 is a lightweight web content management solution that offers the simplicity of Web 2.0 architecture and supports industry standards such as XML and DITA.
DITA Share
DitaShare by Content Technologies GmbH is a DITA-based solution based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. It offers collaborative Single-Sourcing and re-use of DITA topics and DITA maps, as well as publishing of conditional variants. DitaShare includes an integrated version of Altova Authentic 2008, a free web-based XML content editor, allowing authors and editors to work productively from any location using only MS Internet Explorer. Optional web-based editors include JustSystems XMAX, Xopus, and DITA Storm. DitaShare supports any stand-alone text editor in upload and download mode. Dedicated, standalone, XML editors, including MS Word 2007, Adobe FrameMaker 8 and JustSystems XMetaL, can be integrated seamlessly with DitaShare
Other SharePoint solutions are DITA Exchange and In.vision DITA Enterprise Suite
SiberSafe now available as a hosted service
SiberLogic announced SiberSafe On-Demand, a hosted service delivering online XML content management functionality at a low monthly cost, with no risk.
SiberSafe On-Demand delivers SiberSafe XML CMS as an ASP service via high speed internet access to a hosted server in a fully secure data center. DTD choices include DITA, DocBook, or MIL-STD 2361, complete with sample templates and stylesheets.
Other on-demand SaaS (Software as a Service) DITA solutions include Astoria On Demand, Bluestream XDocs, DocZone, and Trisoft Infoshare.
Now 475 DITA Users Members from 31 countries
The DITA Users international membership organization now provides basic online DITA editing and a personal workspace folder for free. Since free memberships were restored on January 1, the growth rate is back to 50-60 new members a month.
The full $100/year membership will include the choice of the leading book on DITA or a desktop DITA Editor to complement the web-based DITA Storm editor.
The book (a $50 value) is JoAnn Hackos' Introduction to DITA - either the original edition by Kylene Bruski and Jennifer Linton or the new Arbortext Edition.
The desktop editor is the $48 Academic Edition of the <oXygen/> XML Editor, now at version 9 with full DITA support.
Desktop editors communicate with web servers via FTP or WebDAV (distributed authoring and versioning). DITA Users can now WebDAV enable individual members' workspace folders.
Most DITA authoring tools offer WebDAV, some as a premium only available in their Enterprise Editions (for example, Syntext Serna and XMLmind).
DITA Users still offers a $50 discount membership without the book or desktop editor. Benefits include a WebDAV enabled folder and discounts on major DITA conferences.
Anyone with a WebDAV-enabled DITA authoring tool can use it on their DITA Users document sets. These include two docsets from IBM and the docset from Comtech Services in the Introduction to DITA book. They can also create their own projects.
Practically speaking, anyone already invested in an advanced DITA authoring tool may be beyond the need for the "DITA from A to B" learning offered by DITA Users. But the new access method may make online training valuable for small tech pub groups who can now use their familiar tools (like Arbortext Editor or XMetaL Author) on the DITA Users website, as well as use innovative tools like the web-based DITA Storm, while their teams get started with DITA.
In any case, DITA Users member fees underwrite our network of DITA support websites, including this newsletter. So please consider joining today.
Upcoming DITA Events
February 5, 2008, 2PM ESTDITA Maturity Model Webinar
Presenters:Amber Swope of JustSystems, Inc. and Michael Priestley of IBM Corporate User Technologies
Presented by KM World February 8, 2008, 2PM EST
DITA Users on SecondLife
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm PT
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm ET
0:00 am - 1:00 am CET (Saturday)
SIM Address at Secondlife:
DITA 163,148,27
Or send an IM to our Avatar: Seico Flanagan
Explore the new way of online meetings. This meeting is a regular chat meeting in SecondLife. February 27-28, 2008
JoAnn Hackos Workshop on DITA
Location: Horsham, PA
Instructor: Frank Miller (bio)
DITA Users members contact Lavonya at 303-232-7586 to receive a discount on Hackos Workshops.
See the DITA News Events Calendar for future events.
About DITA Newsletter
DITA Newsletter is published by DITA News, one of a network of websites in support of DITA. It is available online at www.ditanewsletter.com.
Each of our websites is optimized for some community-oriented function.
DITA Users - helping members get started with topic-based authoring
using a web-based editor (DITA Storm), the Open Toolkit
on the server, a personal workspace folder on the web with three starter DITA docsets, and a private member
directory to locate other DITA Users.
ditausers.org
DITA Infocenter - the DITA architectural and language specifications,
and the Open Toolkit User Guide, in an Eclipse Help format.
ditainfocenter.com
DITA News - a blog aggregator, a mailing list, and this newsletter on
DITA.
ditanews.com
DITA Blog - a group blog for DITA information developers (based on
WordPress).
ditablog.com
DITA Wiki - over 600 pages of resources in a format that encourages
comments and discussions (based on MediaWiki).
ditawiki.org
Please consider joining DITA Users today. Membership is $100USD/year and includes your choice of either: Introduction to DITA by JoAnn Hackos or an Academic License to the <oXygen/> XML Editor, with WebDAV access to your workspace folder on DITA Users.
Your membership fee supports our network of websites, including this newsletter. Discounts on DITA conferences and workshops more than offset your annual membership fee
http://www.ditausers.org/membership/how_to_join/
Would you like to edit the DITA Newsletter? We can offer a small monthly fee to a tech writer who can edit and post an HTML template.
Do you find these newsleterrs worth the effort? Leave a comment or contact Bob Doyle (editor@cmsreview.com)
