DITA Newsletter	Volume 1, Issue 12, July, 2008

Features in this issue

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

• DocZone Lite
• Lone-DITA Tutorial Is Back
• DITA FO Plug-in Support
• DITA Adoption Committee and Member Section
• DITA Open Platform
• DITA Topics Tutorial Slides
• 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 Offers Four Membership Packages

DocZone Announces Lower-Cost SaaS based on Alfresco CMS

DocZone.com announced the forthcoming release of DocZone Lite™, a new Software as a Service (SaaS) solution for creating, managing and publishing content.

The new DocZone Lite is modeled as a complete end-to-end solution, bundled with many of the key features of the original DocZone suite, including browser-based XML authoring, workflow, and single-source publishing to PDF (using the embedded TopLeaf composition engine) and HTML help. The major difference with DocZone Lite is the open source Alfresco CMS platform at its core. This allows the primary DocZone features to be offered to users for a much lower cost. DocZone Lite is bundled with an XML schema, preconfigured workflows, and basic stylesheets for single source publishing, so that it is ready to use “out of the box” with little to no additional setup required.

The base price of DocZone Lite is USD$195/month. The product will become generally available in July 2008.

The Lone-DITA Tutorial is now online at DITA Users

The Lone-DITA.com website is down temporarily as Louise Kasemeier prepares to move her site to the servers at DITA Users. In the meantime, her popular tutorial PDF with supporting files in a zipped folder can now be downloaded from DITA Users.

Getting Started with DITA Tutorial from Lone-DITA (PDF).

Supporting files for DITA Tutorial from Lone-DITA (Zip file).

Suite Solutions to Lead FO Development

Suite Solutions has accepted the leadership role in supporting PDF publishing functionality provided by the DITA Open Toolkit (DITA-OT). The FO plug-in, initially developed and supported by Idiom Technologies, currently facilitates PDF generation of DITA XML documents using the XSL-FO formatting standard.

Suite Solutions will work closely with Robert Anderson of IBM, Chief Architect of the DITA Open Toolkit, and other members of the DITA development community. .

"We believe that robust and stable PDF generation from the DITA-OT is a key enabler to the continued success and growing adoption of DITA, and ultimately makes the standard more accessible to a broader range of technical documentation publishers," said Joe Gelb, Founder and President of Suite Solutions. "Therefore it is critical that native XSL-FO capability receive ongoing and professional support to service the needs of the growing community of DITA users."

OASIS DITA Adoption Committee

A new OASIS technical committee is being formed.

Call For Participation

The OASIS DITA Adoption Technical Committee has been proposed by these members of OASIS:

JoAnn Hackos, Comtech JoAnn.Hackos@comtech-serv.com (Convenor/Chair)
Frank Miller, Comtech Frank.miller@comtech-serv.com
Michael Priestley, IBM mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
Debra Bissantz, LSI Logic debra.bissantz@lsi.com
Troy Klukewich, Oracle Troy.Klukewich@oracle.com
Bob Doyle, Associate bobdoyle@skybuilders.com
Gershon Joseph, Associate Gershon.joseph@tech-tav.com
Tony Self, Associate tself@hyperwrite.com
Kristen Eberlein, Individual keberlein@pobox.com
Rene Gedaly, Individual yourtechwriter@yahoo.com
Bryan Schnabel, Individual bryan.s.schnabel@tektronix.com
Chona Shumate, Individual Chona_Shumate@Cymer.com
Kay Whatley, Individual kay@brightpathsolutions.com

The eligibility requirements for becoming a participant in the Adoption Committee at the first meeting are that:
(a) you must be an employee of an OASIS member organization or an individual member of OASIS;
(b) the OASIS member must sign the OASIS membership agreement;
(c) you must notify the chair (JoAnn Hackos) of your intent to participate at least 7 days prior to the first meeting, which OASIS members may do here - Join the DITA Adoption Committee;
(d) you must attend the first meeting of the TC, scheduled for 28 July 2008.

More information will be posted to the DITA Adoption TC Page

DITA Open Platform 1.0

The DITA Open Platform is an open-source project to provide the DITA community with a free and easy-to-deploy DITA oriented production platform. It is targeted at small companies or teams that do not need a complete CMS solution.

The key deliverable of the 1.0 milestone is the DITA-OP Editor, an Eclipse-based set of plugins featuring:

• The complete DITA architecture and language specification available through the Eclipse help system
• A DITA project which enables DITA files validation (pure XML validation and hyperlink references validation) and problem markers
• Wizards and templates to create new DITA files (topics, concepts, references, tasks, maps, bookmaps and processing profiles)
• A processing profile (ditaval) form editor
• A topic editor which will leverage the power of the Eclipse XML editor (content assist, templates, as-you-type validation, formatting) with a dedicated preview page
• A launch configuration dedicated to the DITA Open Toolkit which enables setting up the toolkit scripts, saving your configuration for later reuse or sharing and even adding automatic build to your DITA project.

Downloads are available here.

Eight Slides Explain DITA Topics, Maps, Specialization

Download a zipped folder with eight explanatory slides that you can use to educate your tech pubs group about DITA.

Feel free to use these in your own presentations on DITA. They combine ideas from some of the best slides in use over the past few years by DITA evangelists.

Or listen to the 5-minute Flash tutorial that uses animated versions of these slides to describe the core functionality of DITA.

 

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 the 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.

DITA Users now offers four membership packages

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 (now over 650) around the world getting started with DITA.

DITA Users is NOT a social network (although you can locate other members easily with our private members directory)), it is a productivity tool. It is also not a production environment, it is a learning tool.

A $150 membership includes the leading book on DITA and a desktop DITA Editor to complement the web-based DITA Storm editor.

A full $100 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 basic $50 membership without the book or desktop editor. Benefits include a WebDAV-enabled folder and discounts on major DITA conferences.

Paid memberships are renewable for $50/year. Free memberships include just one IBM DITA docset.

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.

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, online 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. Four membership packages are available, $150, $100, $50, and free

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/