by Bruce Esrig, Information Architect
In order to adopt DITA, it is essential to take a position on specialization. What is the best way to start: by defining specialized types right away, or by using DITA without specialization until the right structures can be found?

Ideally, your content would be best if you could define its structure well in advance. But is this possible? Let’s look at how a typical adoption process might go.

Adoption process

1. Hear a lot about DITA.

DITA directly supports topic-oriented authoring. It has simple yet powerful mechanisms for organizing topics. Both hierarchical and cross-topic relationships can be managed outside the topic, permitting topics to be reused. Topics may be of three basic types, each with a comparatively simple internal structure. Existing solutions provide excellent support for on-line information delivery. Enhancements are coming that dramatically improve support for book-like outputs.

2. Evaluate existing content.

Some existing content is nicely divided into well-structured topics, but a lot of it is not. Converting existing content would require some re-structuring, but there are options: (a) convert the cleanest content first on a pilot basis, (b) convert lots of additional content, reworking it during the conversion process, (c) convert lots of additional content, doing a minimum of rework, and (d) keep the old content where it is and develop new content in DITA.

3. Make a conversion plan. 

Identify pools of content and what options to follow for each pool. Determine how to get output from each pool: (a) using open-source software, (b) using a vendor’s solution, and (c) using in-house resources.

4. Select a pilot pool of content and convert it.

This is the magical part we want to discuss!

5. Based on experience, revise the conversion plan. 

Decide in more detail what infrastructure needs you will have for each pool of content, and what the content design looks like for the content that is being converted.

6. Migrate authors to DITA as their content is converted.

Discussion

When considering converting a pilot pool of content, the question of specialization becomes urgent. Is this a good time to specialize?

Let’s review the purpose of specialization, by looking at the following paragraph, which is adapted from a draft of the DITA 1.1 Architectural Specification.

Specialization allows you to define new kinds of information. It extends the base DITA language to express specialized information structures or to reflect the needs of specialized subject-matter domains while reusing the default DITA structural features and processing capabilities. Specialization is used to increase consistency or to provide cues for variations in the treatment of output.

For example, if there are output differences between two types of lists, a specialized list element can be defined for each type. To increase consistency, a sequence of specialized elements can be used to define a routine sequence of required and optional sub-headings.

Challenges

There are two huge challenges in creating a specialization:

1.        How do you know whether a specialization that you create will be adequate for the entire range of content that you plan to process?

2.        Are you prepared to take the steps that would be required to support a specialization? 

First, unless you have a thorough understanding of the content that will be converted and the new content that will be written in DITA in the future, you may not be able to plan a specialization. So it may be better to run a pilot, develop best practices and supporting style guides, and then reflect the best of those best practices in a proposed specialization. Once you have the pilot content available in DITA, you’ll be in a better position to review the proposed specialization and determine whether to commit to it.

Second, there are two sides to specialization: authoring and processing. You will need to plan whether to implement the authoring side first, and roll out the processing customizations separately, or whether to roll both out together.

Discussion question

What are your experiences with adopting DITA, and where has specialization fit in for you?