Eliot Kimber has just published DITA for Practitioners Volume 1: Architecture and Technology, which is the first of two books he is publishing about the DITA standard. Volume 1 begins with a hand-on explanation of end-to-end DITA processing that will get you up and running fast, followed by an overview of the DITA architecture.

Inside the Book: 

• Where Do I Start?
  • Background and history of the DITA standard
  • Essential background for practitioners
  • Terminology
• End to End DITA Processing:
  • Setting up your development environment
  • Authoring, managing, and producing a DITA-based publication
  • Running, configuring and customizing the Open Toolkit.
• An Overview of the DITA Architecture:
  • Vocabulary composition and specialization
  • Maps and topics
  • Structural patterns in DITA
  • Linking and addressing
  • The content reference facility
  • Filtering and Flagging
  • SubjectScheme maps