This 5-minute Flash-based tutorial introduces DITA Topics, Specializations for Concept, Task, and Reference, and shows how Topics are organized with DITA Maps for publishing to multiple formats.

View the tutorial here. 

For your convenience, below are the eight slides used in the animated and narrated tutorial. If you want higher-quality images to use in a DITA presentation, please contact Bob Doyle.

The Content Wrangler Community is the new social network dedicated to people who value content as a business asset, worthy of being effectively managed. This is the place where technical communicators, medical and science writers, marketing pros, online community managers, document engineers, DITA gurus, information architects, localization and translation pros, taxonomists, bloggers, documentation and training managers, and content creators of all types hang out. It's much more than a blog.

If you're considering a move to the Darwin Information Typing Architcture (DITA), make time to read "10 DITA Lessons Learned From Tech Writers in the Trenches."  This exclusive and informative article is based on interviews with technical writers at more than 20 software companies -- tech writers that are actually using DITA to create documentation today. It's jam-packed with useful advice, practical tips, honest warnings, and lessons learned from technical writers in the trenches. No marketing blabber. No hidden sales agenda.

DITA News. About 30 places to go for news about DITA.

DITA World. A comprehensive list of DITA websites.

DITA Websites. 20 of the important websites covering DITA today.

DITA Webinars. 11 recorded Webinars on DITA.

DITA Mailing Lists. 6 mailing lists with frequent mentions of DITA.

DITA Publications. 37 publications and a link to a few dozen great presentations on DITA.

DITA Communities. 11 communities, mostly in North America so far.

This tutorial will help you set up and use the DITA Open Toolkit open-source publishing system under a Debian or Ubuntu system in 4 steps and 5 minutes.

This tutorial will help you set up and use the DITA Open Toolkit open-source publishing system under Windows in 5 minutes.

This archive provides links to DITA XML.org <soapbox> feature articles:

• Keywords: why, where and when to use them by Amber Swope
• Reuse strategies and the mechanisms that support them by France Baril
  
• Do We Really Need All that Glue? by JoAnn Hackos, PhD
  

• Specialize, but not right away by Bruce Esrig
  

Adepters is the mailing list for Arbortext Editor editors

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) has seen rapid adoption and implementation. This is especially true when you compare the adoption of DITA with other standards-based approaches to content creation and distribution. Here we are less than a year after DITA 1.0 has been approved and major companies are shipping large multi-language documentation and Help sets that have been created using DITA. We can also point to DITA-specific user groups and conferences, and a myriad of vendors who are now touting DITA support in their products.

by Kay Ethier and Scott Abel