The DITA OT user
guide (authored by Dick Johnson and Anna van Raaphorst) is an excellent
reference and has tons of useful information. It's one of the best references
on the DITA OT. Sometimes, however, I feel that it's sheer size is a challenge
for users, especially first-timers. We as a community need to help improve the
existing DITA OT documentation by making it more user-friendly. Both Anna and
Dick are busy and I have volunteered to reorganize the user guide and possibly
break it down into smaller ones targeted by specific audience groups.
Robert (Anderson) and I met at LavaCon last year and we felt that the best way to proceed would be to understand our target audience and then write for them. To do this, I initiated a task and audience analysis exercise last month. I also compiled a short list of tasks, audience profiles, and guides and posted them (DITA_Analysis.xls) on the DITA Users Yahoo group. It will be great if all of you could contribute to this effort by reviewing the lists and adding to them. Good documentation will go a long way in improving the acceptance of DITA OT.
Robert (Anderson) and I met at LavaCon last year and we felt that the best way to proceed would be to understand our target audience and then write for them. To do this, I initiated a task and audience analysis exercise last month. I also compiled a short list of tasks, audience profiles, and guides and posted them (DITA_Analysis.xls) on the DITA Users Yahoo group. It will be great if all of you could contribute to this effort by reviewing the lists and adding to them. Good documentation will go a long way in improving the acceptance of DITA OT.
DITA OT Evaluation Guide
Let me first start off by thanking the folks who read my post last week. It was heartening to see more than 290 “reads”. I decided to follow up with something more concrete this week. As I mentioned earlier, the DITA OT User Guide is a treasure trove of information and I am merely trying to reorganize the DITA topics in the guide into smaller and usable chunks of information. While some of these chunks might end up as guides, the others might end up as articles, FAQs, etc. To illustrate this. I have begun work on an Evaluation Guide for MS Windows users. This guide is aimed at helping first-time users evaluate OT in a more meaningful manner. The reason why I decided to address such a niche area is because it represents the largest proportion of users. This guide will entirely consist of content from the existing user guide. I’ve already started work on the DITA map and hope to be ready with the guide next week. While I’m at it, here’s the ToC. Please feel free to send me your feedback. I’d like to add a few case studies at the end. So please feel free to contribute.
Installing and upgrading DITA Open Toolkit
System requirements and supported applications
Installation overview
Installing your DITA authoring tool
Installing the Java SDK (JDK)
Installing the DITA Tookit full package distribution
Directories and files in the ditaot directory
Setting up your working environment
(Links to chapters in the UG)
Processing (building) and publishing DITA documents
About the garage sample
Processing to the key Toolkit output targets
Creating DITA topics
About the grocery shopping sample
About topics
Creating topics
About concepts
Creating concepts
About tasks
Creating tasks
About reference information
Creating reference topics
Processing (building) a single topic
For more information (topics)
Creating DITA maps
About maps
Creating maps
Processing (building) the grocery shopping sample
Processing using multilevel maps
For more information (maps)
Linking your content
About linking
Linking using cross-references (xrefs)
Linking using related links
Linking using relationship tables
For more information (linking)
Expanding and customizing access to your information
About indexing
About metadata
For more information (accessing)
Reusing your content
About content reuse
DITAblogs (content reuse)
For more information (reuse)
Customizing your published output
Conditional processing
About conditional processing
Using conditional processing
Adding metadata to elements
Filtering content
Flagging content
Showing revisions
Using your own CSS (cascading style sheet)
Adding a product logo to a PDF2 cover page
Managing your DITA source content
Backing up your source files
About library or source control systems
About content management systems
DITAblogs (managing content)
For more information (managing content)