DITA Newsletter	Volume 1, Issue 11, June, 2008

 

Features in this issue

(see the web version at www.ditanewsletter.com)

• DITA Conferences - Discounts and Free Tickets
• SiberLogic SiberSafe Styler
• Vasont adds Word-based DITA editing
• DITA Adoption Committee
• DITA Tools from A to Z
• DITA Maturity Model Contest
• DITA Tools Survey
• Your D.Q. Helps Make The Business Case for DITA
• DITA Users now 625 members in 35 Countries
• Upcoming DITA Events

DITA Conferences - Discounts and Free Tickets

DITA Users is holding a lottery for free tickets to major conferences featuring DITA in June, including:

• the Gilbane Conference on Content Management Technologies conference June 18-20 in San Francisco, CA
• the X-Pubs conference June 22-24 in London, England
• the new DocTrain Life Sciences conference June 23-26 in Indianapolis, Indiana

These free tickets are worth from 384 British Pounds to $999 and are an exclusive benefit for paying members of DITA Users. See Why Join DITA Users.

All members need to enter the drawing is to send an email to editor@cmsreview.com saying you will attend the conference if you win a free ticket. We don't want these valuable prizes to go to someone who will not be able to use them.

So join DITA Users today and include your request to be in the drawing for one or more of these conferences in the comments section of your order. If you are already a member, send an email request to editor@cmsreview.com.

Don't forget that members of DITA Users get discounts to most major conferences that more than offset their annual membership dues. That includes the three conferences above.

SiberLogic introduces SiberSafe Styler

SiberLogic SiberSafe Styler leverages Microsoft Word's XML capabilities and familiar document formatting interface (just use Word's familiar formatting user interface to map Word styles onto XML elements).

Traditional transformation approaches -- such as XSLT scripts -- that ensure a specific look and feel to your published documentation are often difficult and costly to develop, and equally expensive to maintain. SiberSafe Styler can support both your proprietary DTD (schemas) and the standard ones, including DITA, Docbook, and S1000D.

 

Vasont adds MS Word-based editing

Vasont Systems integration of In-vision Research Xpress Author combines structured authoring with a content management system.

Vasont (like Quark and others mentioned in earlier Newsletters) announced a partnership with In.vision Research. They have completed the integration between the Vasont CMS and Xpress Author, allowing writers to edit XML content in MSWord and save it back to the Vasont CMS. This is great for users who are used to working in MSWord and are frightened of XML.

Microsoft Word users can now work in an XML environment utilizing the Vasont content management system and Xpress Author to update their technical documentation, training materials, knowledge bases and other documentation for publication. Writers simply work in Microsoft Word while accessing and updating the Vasont repository through a simple menu option.

OASIS DITA Adoption Committee

OASIS is forming a DITA Adoption Committee under the direction of JoAnn Hackos to promote DITA.

It will include the following activites:

1. Oversee the DITA XML.org Focus Area
2. Review and ensure accuracy of DITA references in commonly used resources such as Wikipedia
3. Host educational, vendor-neutral webinars
4. Organize vendor-neutral workshops and tracks at OASIS events and other conferences
5. Produce OASIS-branded primers, white papers, position papers, slide presentations, datasheets, and other collateral
6. Develop best practice guidelines
7. Establish liaisons with other organizations who may assist in building awareness or and promoting DITA in a variety of user communities
8. Assist in coordinating promotional efforts of members, leveraging activities wherever beneficial
9. Assist in coordinating press and analyst relations such as briefings, releases, and announcements
10. Encourage and coordinate volunteer efforts to translate the DITA specification and other committee documents into other languages
11. Interface with other TCs to define how DITA can be best integrated with other standards to address specific scenarios
12. Stage interoperability and/or proof-of-concept demonstrations at industry conferences
13. Other projects aimed at increasing adoption as identified by Committee members

Your D.Q. Helps Make the Business Case for DITA

The DITA Quotient estimates the value of DITA for your organization.

Simply answer ten yes/no questions about content management, structure, reuse, single-sourcing, localization, markup, conditional processing, modularity, task-orientation, minimalism, and standards.

You get a printable profile of your D.Q., which you can use as a checklist of questions about your structured content strategy and to compare yourself to industry averages. DITA Consultants are using the D.Q., along with an estimate of the DITA Maturity Model level, to analyze a client's business case for DITA.

Get your DITA Quotient now (fill out an anonymous online form - no registration required).

 

DITA Tools from A to Z

DITA News has now posted the full copy of the STC Intercom special DITA issue cover story, with its extensive feature tables.

Here is introduction to the story:

DITA's promise of topic-based structured authoring is not merely better documentation. lt is the creation of mission-critical information for your organization, written with a deep understanding of your most important audiences, that can be repurposed to multiple delivery channels and localized for multilingual global markets.

Download your copy here.

 

DITA Maturity Model Contest

The DITA Maturity Model defines the industry's first graduated, step-by-step methodology for implementing the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA).

The DITA Maturity Model Contest is looking for your contributions to the discussion on the DITA.XML.org knowlegebase and are offering an 8GB Apple iPod Touch and two tickets to DocTrain East as prizes

 

Just add a comment to one of the DMM Community pages between 1 June and 31 August 2008 and you have a chance to win.

DITA Tools Survey

The first Annual Survey of DITA Tools was recently distributed to six DITA communities.

• the main community mailing list dita-users@yahoo.com (1900 subscribers),
• the official OASIS community at DITA.XML.org (1300 members),
• the DITA News/DITA Users community (600 members),
• the STC (13,000 members),
• the TECHWR-L mailing list (2500 subscribers),
• the Content Wrangler Community (a social network with 1600 members)

The survey asks for a profile of the user, and then collects usage statistics and critical comments on more than three dozen DITA-related tools.

Complete the DITA Tools Survey here.

With a new member from Vietnam, DITA Users is now in 35 Countries with 625 members

Since April 2007, the DITA Users international membership organization has provided basic online DITA editing and a personal workspace folder for free to hundreds of tech writers around the world getting started with DITA.

DITA Users is NOT a social network (although you can locate other members easily), it is a productivity tool.

A full $100/year membership includes 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

June 9-13, 2008

Adobe FrameMaker 8: DITA Publishing Boot Camp

Bright Path Solutions will offer a special DITA-oriented version of their FrameMaker training class.

More information

June 18-20, 2008

The Gilbane Conference - San Francisco

Content management is more important than ever. But even as organizations are working to get their hands around rapidly growing and increasingly diverse collections of content, new web technologies are providing opportunities to create, manage, share, and deliver richer content more easily, sometimes cheaper, and often quicker.

Topics to be covered in-depth include:

• Web Content Management (WCM)
• Enterprise Search, Text Analytics, Semantic Technologies
• Collaboration, Enterprise Wikis & Blogs
• "Enterprise 2.0" Technologies & Social Computing
• Content Globalization & Localization
• Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
• Enterprise Rights Management (ERM)
• Publishing Best Practices
• XML Content Strategies

 

Join DITA Users and enter a drawing for a free ticket ($995 value) to the Gilbane Conference. If you are already a member, don't forget to ask for your DITA Users discount to this conference when you register.

Registration June 22-24, 2008

X-Pubs - Component Content Management, DITA, S1000D

How can XML and component based content systems fundamentally change how our content consumers see and experience information?

Presentations on:

• Web 2.0 / multimedia delivery
• Task-based Information Architecture
• Innovative training and eLearning delivery
• Innovations in presentation and collaboration models
• Getting the most out of user-driven content
• Effective workflow design

Who should come?

X-Pubs 2008 is for Team Leaders, Technical Communicators, Product Managers, Learning Content professionals, and so on who are looking to improve the way content is reused and communicated inside and outside their organisation.

 

Join DITA Users and enter a drawing for a free ticket (380BP value) to X-Pubs 2008. If you are already a member, don't forget to ask for your DITA Users discount to this conference when you register.

Registration

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/