DITA 101

by Ann Rockley

If you're in the process of implementing DITA, expect to do so in the future, or just want to learn more about it without having to wade through technical specifications, this is the book for you. This book covers everything you need to know about DITA.

172 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because it has become, more or less, a standard authoring framework for technical documentation, DITA can enable many good things: reduction of translation costs, re-purposing of blocks of content, facility in porting instructional materials from one company to another, single-source writing for multiple outputs, consistency of layout and writing style across multiple documents and authors.

Technical writers sometimes revolt, sometimes just "push back," when they are introduced to DITA, or DITA-based publishing systems. They feel they are being fitted for straight-jackets. When this feeling arises, writers should remember that DITA is eminently customizable. The system administrators charged with maintaining a DITA-based publishing system can enable new types of topics, elements, and attributes that may be unique to your customers' writing needs, but that are still "DITA-legal." Writers and editors--editors especially, because you have the overview--must push back whenever the straight-jacket tightens. That can be loosened for the benefit of your audiences. However, be aware that if you adorn DITA with too many pearls, you will start losing some of its versatility and publishing power. DITA can become a tightrope where production people and system architects balance editorial people in a give-and-take performance for the benefit of the customer.

I agree both with the reviewers who say DITA 101 is a good high-level peek at DITA and also with those who say it does not provide nuts-and-bolts instruction on how to apply DITA. This is the book to read when your organization is getting ready to deploy DITA, or when you are getting ready to learn how to author in the DITA environment. It is not an instruction manual.

Oh, DITA was invented at IBM and it stands for Darwin Information Typing Architecture. Go figure.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little expensive for what it is, the book is aimed more toward people who are considering moving their info to DITA, not for those who, like me, are already familiar with DITA but are self-taught and want to know more about what we might not know yet. Still, there was some good information, and it was, after all, a "101" book, which implies it's an introduction for beginners.I'd recommend getting the much-less-expensive ebook version, though.