Getting your DITA content into a high-design format like InDesign is a tricky prospect. The biggest stumbling block is the fact that there is no intrinsic link between your ICML and the template that you flow it into. In the end, your InDesign template (you’re using one, right?) is the most important part of a DITA to ICML workflow; it contains the actual styles that will control how your output appears.
We’ve written before on what lurks beneath the surface of an InDesign file, and how drastically it differs from the DITA standard. When you’re looking at going from DITA to InDesign, though, there’s a lot that you need to take into consideration before you jump in.
Web sites are fantastic at content delivery and generally terrible for content authoring. If you’re old enough (like me), you may have experienced the pain of hand-coding HTML or even editing HTML files live on your web server.
Thinking about migrating unstructured content to XML? Take a hard look at your existing desktop publishing workflow. The maturity of your DTP process will have a big impact on a move to XML.
Following a template-based DTP workflow is not just about implementing best-practice processes. Templates make a potential move to XML less expensive and painful.
$0.21 per word.
That’s the average cost in the US to translate content into another language according to Slator, a translation news and analytics site. That number is not speculative; they analyzed the costs per word from over 80 actual proposals gathered by the US General Services Administration (GSA). You can view the source proposals here.
For LavaCon Dublin, Sarah O’Keefe and I delivered a case study presentation on some of the roadblocks we have encountered in implementing DITA at ADP. This article summarizes the key points of the presentation. The presentation and this blog do not represent the views of ADP, LLC.
Your project is coming along nicely. You have your workflow ready, your style guides are composed, and things are looking up. However, you have complex metadata needs that are starting to cause problems. You need a way to ensure that authors are only using valid attribute values, and that your publication pipeline isn’t going to suffer. This is a situation that calls for a subjectScheme.
More than 900 people have signed up for our free DITA courses on LearningDITA.com—thank you! You’ve had a basic introduction to DITA and learned how to write concept, task, reference, and glossary topics. Now you can learn how to collect those topics and establish relationships among them with our newest course: Using maps and bookmaps.
Automated PDF formatting works well for technical communication. But what about highly designed content for printed books? How can companies enable flexibility in print/PDF layouts generated from structured content?
You have DITA. Now what?
More companies are asking this question as DITA adoption increases. For many of our customers, the first wave of DITA means deciding whether it’s a good fit for their content. The companies that choose to implement DITA find that it increases the overall efficiency of content production with better reuse, automated formatting, and so on.
In this webcast recording, Scriptorium’s Alan Pringle, Bill Swallow, and Gretyl Kinsey look at 2016 trends in content and content strategy. Sarah O’Keefe moderates.
It is a common stereotype that an XML workflow for content is rigid, unbending, and free of creativity.
One of the greatest benefits of using DITA is specialization. However, specialized DITA is more challenging and expensive to implement than standard, out-of-the-box DITA, which is something you should consider before you take the plunge.
How do you know it’s time to move to XML? Consult our handy list of indicators.
Let’s wrap up 2015 with a look back at popular posts from the year.
Scriptorium wishes you the best for 2016!
When you’re coming up with a metadata strategy for your content, you should start by developing a taxonomy, or a hierarchy used to organize metadata. A taxonomy will help shape your metadata strategy and make implementation of that strategy possible. In this follow-up post to Making metadata in DITA work for you, you’ll learn some tips for creating a taxonomy that will succeed in helping your audience—both internal and external—find what they need.
In a recent post on lean content strategy, I wrote about a focus on waste reduction:
After creating a nice automated XML-based process, waste in formatting is eliminated, and we declare victory and go home. Unfortunately, the organization is now producing irrelevant content faster, and the content organization is now positioned as only a cost center.
Is your content perceived as a commodity?
The roles and responsibilities in an XML (and/or DITA) environment are a little different than in a traditional page layout environment. Figuring out where to move people is a key part of your implementation strategy.
Thanks to everyone who has signed up for LearningDITA.com and taken the free Introduction to DITA course. The introductory course offers a high-level overview of DITA.
Want a deeper dive into the DITA information types (concept, topic, reference, and glossary)? Today, we are releasing our second course on the DITA concept topic. The course and supporting videos were created by a Scriptorium team led by Gretyl Kinsey (with help from Simon Bate, Jake Campbell, and me).
In testing one day, I was running a set of sample content through the DITA-OT, and much to my consternation, the build was succeeding, but generating no content. The error log helped to ferret out the source of the problem; the preprocessor was attempting to extract a linktext and navtitle from an image file that could not be found.
The image in question was a keyref pulled in from a map referenced in the main map file. Everything validated, previews showed the images resolving correctly, yet the images steadfastly refused to be pulled in during preprocessing—so what was wrong?
Metadata is one of the most important factors in making the most of your DITA XML-based content environment. Whether you’re converting legacy content into DITA or creating new structured content, it’s important to know what metadata (or data about data) your files will keep track of and why. Coming up with a plan for using metadata can be tricky, so here are some tips to make the process easier.
March 2025 update: Read this article to learn about what’s new with LearningDITA. The Introduction to DITA course is still free, and you can sign up for courses at store.scriptorium.com.
Our DITA learning site, LearningDITA.com, is now live with its first course, Introduction to DITA.
Companies experience their greatest growing pains when expanding business to global markets. It’s an exciting time but can also be a rude awakening as differing local requirements emerge for both product and content.
On the content side, keeping all of these requirements in check can be a daunting task. Proper planning and execution is critical for meeting these requirements and delivery dates, and for keeping your sanity.
This guest post is by Carlos Evia, Ph.D., the director of Professional and Technical Writing at Virginia Tech.
The DITA Troubleshooting topic is one of the “new” features in version 1.3 of the standard. However, troubleshooting has been around the DITA world for some good eight years now.
