August 31, 2007
DCL's DITA Test Drive
Over at The Content Wrangler, Scott Abel shares his enthusiasm for the "DITA Test Drive" offering from Data Conversion Labs.
Sometimes the sheer volume of information on the internet is overwhelming. Even with the help of Google Alerts and RSS feeds, it’s easy to miss interesting news. That’s likely the reason we failed to notice this especially interesting offer from the folks at Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL). It’s called the DITA Test Drive Challenge, a program that allows content-heavy organizations a shortcut to DITA. For $3000 (okay, $2995, technically), DCL will convert 500 pages of legacy content to DITA and perform a Content Reuse Analysis on 2500 pages of legacy content. Wow! That’s quite an offer. Why would you want to take advantage of this offer? Because there’s a dirty little secret in XML authoring land. It’s next to impossible to evaluate an XML authoring tool without actually using some of your own content in it. Testing an XML editor with your own content will help you avoid selecting the wrong authoring tool for your organization. Those who skip this step generally purchase software based on the opinions of others and sometimes after having downloaded a free trial version of the software (which is pretty useless without your own DTD and some real content).
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:39 PM
May 26, 2007
DITA for Small Groups
Are you a sole proprietor, sole documentation person, or part of a small doc group? Check out Lone-DITA.
Speaking of DITA, if you haven't already, you should check out DITA Storm, a browser-based DITA editor.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:59 PM
May 21, 2007
Thinking about DITA vs S1000D?
Over at TheContentWrangler.com, Joel Amoussou has some thoughts:
The subject of interoperability between S1000D and the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) has received significant attention within the technical documentation community recently. This article discusses the following issues:
--Shall we create DITA specializations for S1000D data modules?
--How can we facilitate interoperability between DITA and S1000D, to enable round-tripping transforms for example?
--Is the DITA specialization mechanism the best way to make S1000D extensible?
--How can users leverage the strengths of both DITA and S1000D without introducing complexity?
As they say in the blogosphere, read the whole thing.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:31 PM
May 8, 2007
XML and Globalization
SDL Warns Businesses to Think Global When Migrating to XML
SDL, one of the big players in globalization solutions, announced today the findings of a research project into the use of XML in delivering global content across multiple channels. This is something I have written about for Gilbane (here and here), and I am very interested in best practices that will emerge as more and more companies use XML in producing content for global audiences.
SDL appropriately notes that the global implications of moving to XML must be considered up-front, and is providing seven "golden rules" at www.sdlglobalxml.com to ensure successful implementation of XML projects for communicating with global audiences:
- XML alone does not solve the issue of global content
- Think global from the start of your XML strategy
- Automate the process of managing higher volumes of smaller chunks, being sent more frequently for translation
- Ensure translators can visualize the context of XML chunks
- Optimize the structure of your XML for localization
- Protect your XML code during localization
- Ensure terminology and style are consistent across dispersed chunks
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:44 PM | Comments (2)
