"DITAworks is an Eclipse based solution which is built on DITA architecture and supports collaborative modeling, maintaining, publishing of complex documentation arrays."
On June 10, 2010, we had organized a webinar on the topic “DITA Specialization: Tools for Visual Support”. We would like to thank all the participants for their enthusiasm in attending the webinar.
In this webinar, Alexej Spas talked about how the otherwise complicated activity of DITA specialization can be handled comfortably in a visual way. The benefits of having infrastructure support for DITA specialization in terms of model validation, import, export and integration with version control and documentation environment were also talked about. The webinar was structured as follows:
Traditional approach to doing DITA Specializations
Main challenges in doing DITA Specializations
Traditional vs. Visual Specialization/Benefits of visual over traditional Specializations
Demo by doing an example Specialization using visual tools
For those who had missed the webinar or those who want to go through it again, we have uploaded the webinar at:
On 14th of December our development team finished working on release of first public version of DITA Visual Specialization Manager.
DITA Visual Specialization Manager contains comprehensive modeling functions. In productivity area, it provides benefits in terms of lesser time, optimal quality of deliverables, and single-sourcing of the model by its ability to export DTD and XML Schema. The main features of this application are listed as follows:
Wizard-based Visual Editor for DITA specializations with support of structural, domain and attribute specializations
Import of existing specializations from DTD
DITA model validation (checking for validity of specialization)
Export of managed specializations to DTD or XML Schema
Export of Specializations in the form of DITA OT plug-in
Integration with version control
All these benefits and functionalities have been developed to give substantial support to Information Architects and Documentation Project Managers in designing and maintaining their DITA specializations. It is done by providing a wizard-based visual editor for DITA information
types. The development of these functionalities has been made possible through a mix of technological expertise and practical experience gained from various DITA projects.
Besides the standard commercial license for DITA Visual Specialization Manager, *instinctools offers a free-of-cost non-commercial license for development and maintenance of publicly available DITA Specializations and a time-limited evaluation license.
For first information on working with DITA Visual Specialization Manager for typical modeling tasks, we have provided tutorial videos for creating Model Projects, Shell DTDs, Structural and Domain DITA Specialization, and Export to DTD and DITA Open Toolkit on website: http://www.ditaworks.com/Vids.
Downloads for DITA Visual Specialization Manager (for evaluation and
non-commercial free-of-charge use) are available from http://www.ditaworks.com/dl.
For more information about DITA Visual Specialization Manager, please
visit http://www.ditaworks.com/modeling or write to info@instinctools.com.
Our development team is now actively working on release of first version of DITA Visual Specialization Manager (DVSM) that allows management of DITA Specializations in visual and easy way (for more details see: http://www.ditaworks.com/modeling/).
DITA Visual Specialization Manager is planned to be released this week, but now you have a possibility to get a first preview of available functionality by watching some fresh screen casts published on DITAworks website. These demos cover following functions of DVSM:
We are looking forward for your feedbacks on features presented there.
I remind that DITA Visual Specialization Manager will be available free-of-cost for non-commercial usage and for architects developing DITA models that are publically accessible.
*instinctools GmbH has decided to provide free-of-cost licenses for its DITA Visual Specialization Manager, an application designed to make complex DITA specialization tasks easier to work with. These free licenses will be valid for unlimited time period but limited to the development and maintenance of open DITA Specializations e.g. specializations under OASIS for different industries such as Machine, Pharmaceutical etc. This offer is aimed at lowering the barriers to DITA usage and adoption. Read the rest of this entry »
In this post, I’d like to describe an approach that we use to integrate DITA based documentation into Eclipse RCP applications and facilitate collaboration between development and documentation teams. Although we use DITAworks for authoring, but the same conceptual approach can also be used with other authoring tools. Read the rest of this entry »
Very often in technical documentation area we are coming to need of publishing of terminology glossaries. DITA provides a way to define glossaries with some important aspects to keep in mind. This article explains specifics of glossaries support in DITA 1.1 and DITA 1.2. It also describes how DITAworks supports generation of glossaries. Read the rest of this entry »
On June 04, 2009 I gave a presentation on producing documentation for Eclipse RCP applications at Eclipse Stammtisch.
Presentation describes the issues in producing documentation for Eclipse RCP applications and how DITAworks addresses these issues by introducing single source publishing approach. Presentation addresses how certain specifics of Eclipse Help format are managed by DITAworks.
The event took place on the premises of Wirtschaftsfoerderung Region in Stuttgart and was organized by *instinctools GmbH in a joint effort with WeigleWilzcek, Eclipse Foundation and Wirtschaftsfoerderung Region Stuttgart.
On June 22, 2009 *instinctools will present released DITAworks 1.1 as an important innovation on the 9th Single Source Forum in Munich.
This event is an ideal opportunity for visitors from all kinds of business areas to get information on challenges and innovations in the documentation world.
This year, emphasis is placed on new developments in the provision of information. How suitable are Web 2.0 technologies for the documentation environment? How can clients be directly involved in the creation process? And how do collaboration platforms promote the exchange of information?
Answers to these questions are given by acclaimed field experts in the form of lectures and practice examples on themes such as virtual team work, collaborative tools and user involvement.
Professor Dr. Volker Markl from the Technical University of Berlin opens the program with an exciting insight into the intelligent search machines of tomorrow. To round off the day, a panel of experts from science and business will discuss the latest trends in technical documentation.
In the accompanying exhibition, renowned software manufacturers present their proven tools and interesting new developments.
This article discusses the main challenges that a documentation team faces when it decides to use DITA as a source format for Eclipse Help documentation. It also explains how DITAworks documentation tool plans to address these challenges.
About Eclipse Help
The Eclipse Platform includes its own help system based on an XML table of contents referencing HTML files. This is a standard way to document Eclipse-based software products.
But eclipse help format is not reduced to usages only inside of Eclipse platform. It is available as standalone server solution and can be used for providing ANY help content via Web server. Eclipse help system provides such important functions like navigation through TOCs, search, indexing, bookmarking and s.o.
When Eclipse help is used for documentation of Eclipse-based software, it allows much more sophisticated mechanisms for context-dependent help definitions like: search expressions, contexts, so called cheat sheets and s.o.
Additionally, due to component-oriented architecture of Eclipse, Eclipse help is structured in form of plugins that can be independently deployed and interlinked. This enables creation of scalable documentation that fits to complex product configurations.
Eclipse Help and DITA
DITA as single-source architecture opens a promising approach for maintaining all your documentation in single format. Eclipse help as one of the publishing formats can address needs of context dependent application help as well as generic online help.
DITA Open Toolkit provides a way to transform DITA maps and topics into Eclipse help plugins, but these possibilities are quite limited. Namely DITA OT will generate a TOC file and set of HTML topics linked to source map, but it does not address following important specifics of Eclipse Help:
Definition of contexts (used for context-dependent help)
Interlinking topics between several Eclipse help plugins
Definition of search phrases
Definition of cheat sheets
Tuning of plug-in contents (Manifest properties, amount of TOCs, indexes, contexts and s.o.)
Some other advanced features of eclipse help.
These limitations are hindering adoption of Eclipse help as publishing output format for DITA content. They need to be addressed if we want to use the full capability of Eclipse help system and this issue can be seen as a current challenge for DITA-oriented tooling.
I would like to draw some attention to DITAworks development outlook for 2009 that was recently published. It briefly describes major milestones and their targets. Some milestones are already having detailed description of planned functionality.
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