1. A Short Introduction to Darwin Information Typing Architecture: DITA
Michael Priestley
IBM®

2. What’s ahead? History of DITA – Why was DITA developed?
Introduction to DITA – What is DITA?
Benefits of DITA – Why should you care?

3. Background: Why DITA?

4. Identify the need – Customer issues
Solutions, not products
Integration of information
Information glut
More meaningful information (role & task based)
Out-of-date information in books
Updating and maintaining information
Reduce cost of deployment of information
Provide information on-line
Reduce support costs
Customize and update information

5. History of Markup - structured information
ISIL
1980s:
BookMaster
IPF
1990s:
SGML, HTML
2000+
XML-based
semantics
Need for
Change
Shorter cycles
Fewer people,
Decreasing learning curves,
Faster, better, cheaper
Components,
Multiplatform,
Integrated systems
Web-deployed products
Partner and OEM use of
information
Printed Books
Limited reuse
Single purpose
Printed and online
Books, online help
Monolithic
Book-Centered DTD
Online information,
Webs, printable &
Printed books
Information
Architecture

6. The Vision (1998/1999)
This is a representation of the vision we had in 1998/1999.

7. DITA at IBM In use across IBM 100s of projects 100,000s of topics
Both new and converted from SGML or HTML
Translate DITA content into over 50 languages

8. “Open” DITA DITA 1.0 specification is an OASIS standard
XML tool vendors (Arbortext, Blast Radius, Idiom, Rascal, Syntext)
Consultants (Comtech, Innodata, Mulberrytech)
Companies (BMC, Boeing, IBM, Intel, Lucent, Nokia, Sun)
Organizations (National Library of Medicine, US Department of Defense)
DITA Technical Committee working now on 1.1 requirements.
DITA-OT as Open Source on SourceForge
Reference implementation - Will continue to be enhanced as a production system
Developing vendor/contributor relations for known build-out niches (FO, indexing, style interface, new outputs, etc.)
Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards

9. What is DITA?

10. DITA defined
Darwin: DITA utilizes principles of inheritance for specialization
Information Typing: DITA was designed for technical information based on an information architecture of Concept, Task and Reference
Architecture: DITA is a model for extension both of design and of processes

11. Core design principles of DITA
Topic orientation
Discrete units of information covering a specific subject with a specific intent
Topic granularity
Self-contained topics combine with other topics into information sets
Strong typing
DTDs and schemas guarantee that DITA types follow identical information structures
Specialization
Architecture for extending basic types to new types adapted for a particular use within an information set
Common base class
Top-level "generic" base type provides “fallback” for all types

12. The core DITA topic types – The “IT” in DITA
concept
task
reference
A unit of information which is meaningful when it stands alone.
Provides background information that users need to know.
Provides procedural details such as step-by-step instructions.
Provides quick access to facts.

13. DITA and reuse

14. Promise and Reality of XML
Separate content from form: reuse content in different presentation media
Use specific markup to describe your content
Use standard solution to enable easy exchange of information
Reality – Generic XML
Generic XML provides an SGML with simpler syntax but similar problems
Generic solutions - not specific to needs
Knowledge representation is strongly related to current corporate culture
Tradeoff
The more useful your markup is to you, the more it will cost you and the fewer people will share the costs

15. Resolve tradeoffs through more efficient reuse
Reuse of content
Reuse of design
Reuse of processing

16. Reuse of content Reuse flows from the topic-based paradigm
If content is authored as standalone topics
Topics can be reused in different contexts
Topics from multiple components can be integrated as a solution
Good writing enables reuse

17. Topics reused in deliverables
Deliverables select topics from a pool
Deliverable 1 uses topics 1 and 4
Deliverable 2 uses topics 2 and 4
Neither deliverable uses topic 3

18. Working with DITA maps A DITA map applies context to the topics
Eclipse help
JavaHelp
HTMLHelp
web pages
books
A DITA map applies context to the topics
Organizes a set of topics into hierarchies, tables, and different kinds of groups (e.g. sequences, families, choices)
Sets properties of the topic at a position within the map
A DITA map applies context to the topics
Organizes a set of topics into hierarchies, tables, and different kinds of groups (e.g. sequences, families, choices)
Different organization for different deliverables — not just different formats for the same content
Can reuse the same topic with different collections of topics
Can provide multiple views on the same topics: by product, by task, …
Sets properties of the topic at a position within the map
Properties include the title and metadata
Change the title relative to the parent topic

19. General types are rarely enough
Reuse of design
General types are rarely enough
Requirements specific to organization or industry
Meet requirements with new elements
New element specializes existing element
New content is a subset of base content
Add only the deltas - still use the base
Designs are modular
For instance, optional b and i highlighting

20. Specializing from Topic to Task
title
title
title
title
prolog
prolog
prolog
prolog
metadata
metadata
metadata
metadata
body
body
taskbody
taskbody
related
related - -
links
links
related
related - -
links
links
prereq
prereq
result
result
Small DTD additions to enforce document structure.
May have no CSS or XSL process changes.
context
context
example
taskxmp
steps
steps
postreq
postreq
step
step
cmd, (info | substeps | tutorialinfo | stepxmp
cmd, (info | substeps | tutorialinfo |
xmp | choices)*, result?
| choices|choicetable)*, stepresult?

21. Specialization for DITA topic types
Use the right topic type for your content
Concept
Task
Reference
Event announcement or
Insurance claim form
Tutorial
Command
API
Message or
Use case specification
or . . .
C++ API
Java API

22. Reuse of processes Base processing in extensible XSLT
Standard processing can be customized
Override standard processing as needed
Processes for base elements apply to new specialized elements by default
Can use base processing
Can write custom processing if needed

23. Specialized processes
Specialized processes handle the delta for specialized topic types
Base and delta DTDs
Base and delta processors
Base
topic
Base processors
Task
bcTask
Specialization-specific processors
Concept
Reference
bcReference

24. Summary of reuse Reuse content through topics
Author content as standalone information
Reuse designs through specialization
Meet requirements specific to organization
Keep interoperability with others
Reuse processing
Customize only as needed

25. Summary of problems solved
Development challenges met
Shorter development cycles
Eliminate variability in HTML outputs
Support componentization of products and need for reuse
Deliver solution information, not product information
Integration of information
Information glut
More meaningful information (role & task based)
Out-of-date information in books
Updating and maintaining information
Reduce cost of deployment of information
Provide information on-line
Reduce support costs
Customize and update information

26. Summary of business value
Faster time to value
– create solution offering across industry stacks or within your business with different components
Increased reuse
– of content by referencing topics in many map contexts
– of designs by providing only the specialized delta on the general base
– of processing by overriding the base only where needed
Investment protection
– because of automated fallback to more general markup

27. The DITA vision: A platform for collaboration
Content markup that’s specific to the subject area
Marketing event announcements, Development functional specifications, or Real estate appraisal forms
Shared markup modules
Across industry segments or communities and between partners
Local markup for the organization
Agree on the shared basics, diverge on the local idiosyncrasies
Install the specialization modules, assemble the document types, and go

28. Where next? Learn more about DITA Where do we take DITA together?
OASIS –
Cover pages –
Where do we take DITA together?
Join the dialog on the DITA forum –
Download the DITA Open Toolkit

29. Backup Slides

30. Value of DITA to content creators
DITA is the foundation for collaboration for developing information.
DITA allows product / component families to easily share content. This allows us to build solutions much more than we have every done before and much more quickly. Teams can pull information from across diverse products into a single output.
Teams can manage the integration of information by using DITA maps.
DITA maps pull together individual topics into an order. This allows different teams to pull the same topic into different maps and to build a solution map, pulling topics from across components or products. This allows flexibility in combining and recombining information with maps and does not require authors to touch the original topics.
DITA provides authoring consistency.
Authoring consistency comes from strong information typing. Information typing also facilitates reuse and integration across product teams.
DITA defines an architecture for extending and specializing its core information types, enabling rapid response to frequent industry changes. DITA enforces business process / architectures.
New information types are extended as delta changes from a core type, greatly reducing the time and resource needed for development, testing, and deployment.
DITA supports personalization through a rich set of metadata.
DITA’s tag set is based on a core set of familiar HTML tags, making it easy to teach others and allowing new authors to get up to speed quickly.

31. Value of DITA to customers and users
DITA organizes content into topic-based information units, with each topic describing a single task, concept, or reference item. Because of this focus on topics, customers can:
Update and replace single topics of information quickly as needed to support an on-demand environment.
Receive increased consistency - a task is a task, a concept is a concept, and so on, and all follow a consistent and agreed-upon structure.
Receive a quicker time to value -- the sharp focus on tasks that customers must do quickly brings the emphasis on specific core tasks, not requiring customers to wade through information.
There is an improved quality when information is written in DITA.
Authors can use analytic techniques to ensure that the information about new features and functions is complete: each feature/function requires one or more tasks, one or more pieces of conceptual information, one or more pieces of reference information.
Customers can use DITA as a foundation on which to build their information; to also integrate their information with other information. DITA easily supports topic-oriented content for their internal training and education courses.

32. Value of DITA to business partners & content integrators
DITA enables a foundation both for interoperability with other DITA adopters and for extensibility to meet the requirements of their industry or organization.
Focused – allows 3rd parties to specialize with own information
Third-parties can easily customize or provide new content with standard tools.
Vendors can quickly integrate information about their products with other vendors’ products. DITA allows additional leverage since the information can also be customized and extended in a consistent, standard, pre-determined data format.
DITA metadata and domain vocabularies can be defined at an industry level, such as telecom, allowing other industries to leverage consistent vocabularies.
Standards-based
Define platform for interchange - DITA topic is base with fallback for specialization
Rapid development platform for extending base information
Rules for inheritance – allow others to add with small modifications, not rewrite DTD from scratch
Reuse across functions
Reuse topics in education / learning environments