currently in graduate school and i have to write DITA documentation. only neither i nor anyone else in my class actually knows what that means. any sort of help understanding the basics would be much appreciated
In: Technology
Hey, this is my day job.
DITA XML is a structured documentation language. _What do you mean by that?_ Well, its like HTML in a ways (HTML and XML are both what they call “markup” language). There are rules for it that can be validated by various tools. There are numerous software packages that can read, parse, edit and write it. Just like HTML you can make it look different (without changing the actual content) by applying a different style sheet, or in this case, a transform.
Its made up of building blocks called elements, and elements can have attributes (which can be, in turn used to transform or render their display different in certain cases). Its _structured_ in the sense that there are strict rules about what type of elements can be nested within each other. Which is cool because not only can tools check that your document is well structured (so it looks ok), but also that it can be parsed by tools that, for example, could render it into a webpage, or a PDF or a Windows style compiled help file (chm) or whatever you have the appropriate transforms for. Or, tools can automatically index your DITA files to generate a table of contents, or an index – that is automatically updated when you change the elements and content of your DITA files. Super handy.
_Well, how is this different than Microsoft Word?_ Well, not so different. Except its not a closed/proprietary document format, its an open standard that’s been around for a long time. A lot of large technical publishers have tool chains that can crank out massive thousand page documents using DITA source. And being an ascii text based source format, it lends itself readily to CMS (content management systems) and revision control systems like you’d use for source code control. So you can do “diffs” on files to see what’s changed in your documents a lot easier than Word’s own comparison tools or 3rd party ones.
I don’t have any sample tutorials at the ready (I’m sure google can be your friend), but if you’re looking for applications/tools that can edit DITA XML, Adobe FrameMaker is one, but I use a tool called oXygen XML Editor – both have free trials.
Keep in mind, having an _editor_ (or “authoring” tool in the parlance) is just one part; you need a publishing solution that can take your DITA (and DITA MAPs aka document structure maps) and transform it into end products: PDFs or HTML webpages or help files or whatever. Some authoring tools like FrameMaker have that built in, but there are alternatives like the DITA Open Toolkit: https://www.dita-ot.org/
Actually now that I check it out, the DITA Open Toolkit’s introductory pages give you a pretty good introduction.
But if you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.
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