Comments on: DITA is not the answer http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/2007/12/11/dita-is-not-the-answer/ musings on technical communications Sat, 04 Feb 2012 20:40:22 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Gordon http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/2007/12/11/dita-is-not-the-answer/comment-page-1/#comment-41024 Gordon Thu, 17 Mar 2011 09:22:54 +0000 http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/2007/12/11/dita-is-not-the-answer/#comment-41024 Casey, Switching publishing systems is not a simple matter so, unfortunately and entirely due to the timing, I have not looked at DITA in any great detail since. As I tried to suggest, I'm sure the vendors will start to get easy to rollout solutions but, for at least the next couple of years, it's not something I'd be looking at. My post was more to flag this for others, DITA is a great idea in principle, but in practice (at the time of writing) is was, IMHO, too resource intensive for most technical writing teams. Casey,

Switching publishing systems is not a simple matter so, unfortunately and entirely due to the timing, I have not looked at DITA in any great detail since.

As I tried to suggest, I’m sure the vendors will start to get easy to rollout solutions but, for at least the next couple of years, it’s not something I’d be looking at.

My post was more to flag this for others, DITA is a great idea in principle, but in practice (at the time of writing) is was, IMHO, too resource intensive for most technical writing teams.

]]> By: Casey Jordan http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/2007/12/11/dita-is-not-the-answer/comment-page-1/#comment-38987 Casey Jordan Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:24:54 +0000 http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/2007/12/11/dita-is-not-the-answer/#comment-38987 Gordon, I enjoyed reading your thoughts on DITA and at the time you wrote this article I think you were spot on. (Have you used DITA since?) Since then though, the market has tried to tackle this problem with the growing number of tools to help lower the barriers to DITA. For the past two years that has been exactly what my company has been doing in developing easyDITA (http://easydita.com). I'd love to give you a demo sometime and get your thoughts on our shot at an end-to-end "easy to rollout DITA" solution. Cheers, Casey Gordon,

I enjoyed reading your thoughts on DITA and at the time you wrote this article I think you were spot on. (Have you used DITA since?) Since then though, the market has tried to tackle this problem with the growing number of tools to help lower the barriers to DITA.

For the past two years that has been exactly what my company has been doing in developing easyDITA (http://easydita.com). I’d love to give you a demo sometime and get your thoughts on our shot at an end-to-end “easy to rollout DITA” solution.

Cheers,

Casey

]]> By: Bill Hagen http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/2007/12/11/dita-is-not-the-answer/comment-page-1/#comment-11665 Bill Hagen Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:39:45 +0000 http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/2007/12/11/dita-is-not-the-answer/#comment-11665 Interesting discussion. I could both agree and disagree with many of the points raised. My company has implemented single sourcing with DITA. It works--for example, I can update a set of topics and by doing so update 5 different manuals. Our "reuse magic" is mostly accomplished by ditamaps and conditional content. But after 1.5 years, I'm the only writer on our DITA project. One of the writers here made a good point--if there were 10 writers and 1,000 topics, would the writers know the content well enough to know what information to reuse? For 5 manuals, our cost was pretty high--i.e., the cost of a DITA-aware XML editor and CMS software. For us DITA has been a success, but it doesn't solve all our problems either. Interesting discussion. I could both agree and disagree with many of the points raised. My company has implemented single sourcing with DITA. It works–for example, I can update a set of topics and by doing so update 5 different manuals. Our “reuse magic” is mostly accomplished by ditamaps and conditional content. But after 1.5 years, I’m the only writer on our DITA project. One of the writers here made a good point–if there were 10 writers and 1,000 topics, would the writers know the content well enough to know what information to reuse? For 5 manuals, our cost was pretty high–i.e., the cost of a DITA-aware XML editor and CMS software. For us DITA has been a success, but it doesn’t solve all our problems either.

]]> By: Does single sourcing content work? | one man writes http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/2007/12/11/dita-is-not-the-answer/comment-page-1/#comment-9926 Does single sourcing content work? | one man writes Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:24:20 +0000 http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/2007/12/11/dita-is-not-the-answer/#comment-9926 [...] of the more popular posts on this blog is titled DITA is not the answer and, whilst things are certainly moving forward, it’s a little sad that it is still [...] [...] of the more popular posts on this blog is titled DITA is not the answer and, whilst things are certainly moving forward, it’s a little sad that it is still [...]

]]> By: mhiatt http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/2007/12/11/dita-is-not-the-answer/comment-page-1/#comment-9888 mhiatt Mon, 19 Jan 2009 03:25:40 +0000 http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/2007/12/11/dita-is-not-the-answer/#comment-9888 I have never seen single sourcing work. Maybe a single author who knows the topics thoroughly enough to reuse, or a tightly knit group of writers synched up at the same level. But mostly, I have been with companies that trumpeted topic based writing and reuse during the SGML Docbook phase of the early nineties. And I just left a company that uses Vasont CMS and XMetaL where all writers worldwide author on a single db. It doesn't matter. Content reuse, even when requiring a single search and reference by a writer to another's topic, rarely happens. And forget about getting training or anyone other dept to reuse--even when fully localized. I just requires too much coordination. Some companies tout content reuse to justify localization--sometimes MT--but I would like to look at the books to see if it is really viable. The only place we are going to reuse content is in web mashups using semantic markup once the content is in the cloud. How does semantics come into this? I'm still thinking that through. See Dbpedia.org for more questions. I have never seen single sourcing work. Maybe a single author who knows the topics thoroughly enough to reuse, or a tightly knit group of writers synched up at the same level.

But mostly, I have been with companies that trumpeted topic based writing and reuse during the SGML Docbook phase of the early nineties. And I just left a company that uses Vasont CMS and XMetaL where all writers worldwide author on a single db. It doesn’t matter. Content reuse, even when requiring a single search and reference by a writer to another’s topic, rarely happens.

And forget about getting training or anyone other dept to reuse–even when fully localized. I just requires too much coordination. Some companies tout content reuse to justify localization–sometimes MT–but I would like to look at the books to see if it is really viable.

The only place we are going to reuse content is in web mashups using semantic markup once the content is in the cloud. How does semantics come into this? I’m still thinking that through. See Dbpedia.org for more questions.

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