DITA Reuse Strategies · DITA Reuse Strategies Radu Coravu [email protected] @radu_coravu
Creating Documentation With A Wiki: The DITA Storm Project
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Creating Documentation With A Wiki: DITA Storm Project Innovative Technology Track
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Presented at DocTrain East 2007 by Alex Karesin -- Wiki-based content authoring is gaining momentum. This simple concept provides exceptional convenience and ease of use for the editors. Ironically, benefits of free-style editing prevent it from penetrating into enterprise environments with stricter content structure and reusability requirements offered by, for example, DITA XML standard. How do you combine convenience of free style writing and advantages of structured, reusable DITA content? The concept of DITA wiki is designed to satisfy both. Alex Karezin shares his experience of creating and adopting DITA content management system that was built by integrating web-based DITA XML editor into wiki and generic CMS. We will look at wiki platforms from structured authoring perspective; identify suitable candidates, highlight their advantages, review different levels of DITA-wiki integration and summarize efforts required to achieve it. Lastly we will address data migration, survey user experience and draw conclusions.
Transcript of Creating Documentation With A Wiki: The DITA Storm Project
Creating Documentation With A Wiki:DITA Storm Project
Innovative Technology Track
Overview
• Background
• Basics: DITA, DITA Storm, Wiki
• Structure in wiki content
• DITA – wiki integration
• Takeaways
<topic> <title>Some little topic</title> <body> <p>Here's a <b><i>cute</i></b>, <b>little</b> topic. </p> <ul> <li>Some item</li> <li>Another item</li> </ul> </body></topic>
DITA Content
<task> <title>Restart your system</title> <shortdesc>This is standard procedure after installing any new software.</shortdesc> <taskbody> <steps> <step> <cmd>If you are on a Windows system, go to the start menu.</cmd> </step> <step> <cmd>If you are on a Linux system, contact your system administrator for assistance. You may not need to restart.</cmd> </step> … </steps> </taskbody></task>
<reference> <title>element</title> <shortdesc>Describes a single element …. </shortdesc> <refbody> <refsyn> <codeblock><!ELEMENT …></codeblock> </refsyn> <properties> <property> <proptype>string</proptype> <propvalue>name</propvalue> <propdesc>Name of the element… </propdesc> </property> ... </properties> <example> ... </example> </refbody></reference>
DITA Storm Editor
• XML Editor• Browser-based• WYSIWYG• DITA-aware• …
Wiki
wiki + encyclopedia content = wikipediawiki + dictionary content = wiktictionarywiki + quotations = wikiquotewiki + ??? = wikimania…
“A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated”
Wiki Has Some Clear Advantages• Easy viewing• Easy navigation• Easy editing• Easy collaboration• Versioning
Less developed but also available• Workflow• Authorization• Authentication• Content reuse• …
• 1.5M articles
• 2,000 new articles per day
• 15,000 active editors
• 206 languages
Wiki Features
Discussion
Versioning
Reviewing
Problem: Content Is Unstructured• Difficult to edit
• Difficult to publish
• Difficult to reuse
…is it truly unstructured?
More Examples…
Most of Wiki Content Is Structured
• Topics• References• Concepts• Tasks
DITA + wiki
• DITA is asking to be integrated into wiki
Adding structure to simplicity
Adding Structure to What’s Out There
• Basic DITA Integration
– Easily achievable
• Deep DITA Integration
– Difficult
• Wiki Engines– Mediawiki
– Twiki
– MoinMoin
– JotSpot
– Confluence
– JSPWiki
DITA Storm + wiki
DITA + wiki
Excellent fit for:
• Development documentation
• Website content management
• Other applications
Takeaways
• DITA is natural
• Do XML/DITA conversion research now
• Wiki is especially good for iterative writing
• Structured wiki authoring in coming
