DITA – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality

DITA – a language for single source publishing

with support for multilinguality

7th Workshop “Software Engineering Education and Reverse

Engineering”, Risan, Montenegro, 8 – 15 September 2007

Sam Joachim

'Dita – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality', Risan, Montenegro, September 2007 2

Agenda

Motivation of this talk

DITA – History & Background

DITA – short system overview

Teaching Material Repository: Current state & future work


Starting point - JCSE

Distributed, mainly independent development of PPT slides: there are different independent Versions (in different language variants) originating from more or less one source

English Version 1.1

English Version 1.6

English Version 2.0

Language variants

Language variants

Language variants

High effort in maintenance and for developing new materials / tailor materials for another auditorium


History of last workshops: ‚Authoring by Aggregation‘ process

Main Idea:

Learning Objects should be divided into reusable modules or fragments.


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History of last workshops:Learnativity Content Model (Duval & Hodgins 2003)

JCSE CourseTopicSectionAssociated Slides

Shap

es, S

lides

, Pict

ures

, Tex

tfiel

ds


History of last workshops: Authoring systems for teaching materials for groups of authors

RepositoryLocal file system

Local file system

Learning Objects

Meta data

External content Courses

Authoring environment

impo

rt export

AuthorAuthor

Author


Some questions emerged

Authoring environment: • Structure

• Properties / Features

• Workflow

• Data representation of the material

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RepositoryLocal file system

Local file system

Learning Objects

Meta data

External content Courses


impo

rt

export

AuthorAuthor

Author


Browser

local authoring tools

OnlineDesired target state: Architecture



Browser / Eclipse

local authoring tools

Teaching material repository

Teaching material repository (local)

Repository DB

Metadata DB

Synchronization Synchronization

Repository DB

Metadata DB

Offline


Schematic Workflow Process (Ravda 2006)

Teaching / Learning Object or Material Repository

knowledgegrid

.doc

.pdf

.ppt

eLesson

.

.

.

Essence

What is the essence?Text? Pictures? Style?

Tool Tool 2

Automated.Some AI?

Half-bakedessence

Tool 3 Final document

Interactivity.Some NI

XML?

Moodle

Ahyco

.ppt Slides

Something

.

.

.

Tool 4

(Semi-) Automatic generation of “Raw

media objects“

Raw data and media elements in XML format

Information objects (groups of objects, graphics)

(Semi-) Automatic grouping of

connected objects

Objects in some Teaching Material Language

(LMML /<ML3>)

Interactiv „Authoring by Aggregation“ process

uses fragments/modules to generate new material


Data Representation:Core: DITA as basic data format

DITA

.ppt

Graphical presentation

(color, fonts, shapes corporate identity)

Transformation

(both directions)

Different slide formats

(.ppt, .pdf (1, 2, 6), Lecture Notes)

Versioning of slides / objects / fragments

Input from different versions e.g. in different languages

New slides? Changed slides? Changed objects?

Aspects concerning localizing

• separated management of language specific elements


Advanced features:

Translation support with Translation Memory Systems

Creation of teaching objects for new courses different combinations of existing material

Different output styles Textbook, .ppt, .pdf (Slides: 2on1, 6on1), .html, …

Building new material with respect to dependencies of existing learning objects


Agenda






DITA – Abbreviation & OverviewThe Darwin Information Typing Architecture is an XMLarchitecture for producing and reusing technical information.

DITA developed by IBM: 3rd May 2005 DITA 1.0 OASIS Standard 31th May 2007 DITA 1.1 OASIS Standard

DITA features: Scalable reuse

you can reuse content in any number of delivery contexts simultaneously without complicating the source

Single Source Publishing Interchangeability

you can treat specialized markup as if it were general getting reuse of tools and processes


What is Single Source Publishing ?

Why Single Source Publishing ?

There is a trend toward publishing content in different media

In a manual way: time-consuming, error-prone and expensive

How does SSP work?

Content is managed in a single location / source

From this source: generate specialized content for different target media

en detail: Content is divided in information e.g.

paragraphs, sentences, graphics These information: - are produced only one time - are administrated in a single place - can be reused - can be used to generate output in

different media

SSP data source

Online help Slide presentations

Web Manuals, reports,

catalogues


Single Source Publishing Example: DB2 installation manual

Different roles and needs in the documentation lifecycle Project manager

Has to manage huge amounts of documentations

Administration of dependencies in these documentations

Version management

Technical Writers Authoring tools for producing

documentation User

Different target media e.g. HTML, PDF, RTF

The Installation manual for DB2 appears in different scenarios / documentations:

Standalone Database Content Management

System Lotus Notes DB2 Intelligent Miner

consistency


Single Source Publishing – pro & conpro

reuse of information reduction of creation time and

costs constantly changing information

decreased cost for maintenance, review and translation

consistency in the whole documentation (content and design)

no redundant information faulty information can be

avoided more easily because changes occur only in a single place (no copy & paste)

changes affect always all documents (e.g. header)

all in all,this points can improve the quality of the documents

con much more design complexity

because reuse has to be planed respectively information has to be structured carefully

use of tools is very necessary for producing, administrating and combining the information blocks

staff has to work with new technique


Agenda






What is DITA?

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information.

DITA divides content into small, self-contained topics that can be reused in different deliverables.

The extensibility of DITA permits to define specific information structures and still use standard tools to work with them.

The ability to define group-specific information architectures enables DITA to support content reuse and reduce information redundancy.


Basic concepts in DITA

Topic: A topic is a unit of information with a title and content, short

enough to be specific to a single subject or answer a single question, but long enough to make sense on its own and be authored as a unit.

Map: DITA maps are documents that collect and organize references

to DITA topics to indicate the relationships among the topics. They can also serve as outlines or tables of contents for DITA deliverables and as build manifests for DITA projects.


Other features of DITA

Tailoring DITA / inheritance: Topics and maps can be specialized according to

the actual needs New element definitions are derived from existing

ones Comparatively easy syntax and known structures

(XML, .html) Built-in support for multi language documents by

using language typed strings


Example: Topic03.ppt

<reference id="Folie3“> <title>Process models: used

terminology</title> <refbody> <section> <ul> <li>Software process models</li> <li>Phase models</li> <li>Life cycle models</li> <li>Software development models</li> <li>Project models</li> </ul> <note>(Note: terms are …</note>

</section> </refbody></reference>


Agenda



DITA – system overview



Basic idea Slide as a specialisation of a DITA topic:

‘slide_topic’ ‘slide_topic’ consists of the elements of the slides

Layout information is kept in a separate style sheeta) individual layout of slides (save original .ppt layout)b) Change standard design for other output formats

A whole ppt file is represented as a specialisation of a DITA map


Current state:

PPT ‘Com Add-Ins’ for

(1)Transforming ppt to DITA + stylesheets

(2)Transformation DITA PPT

(3)Changing layout / appearance of the material


Original

Rebuild from DITA

Actual state problems: Changing fonts in a

paragraph Direction of lines Transparent colors Tables & pictures


SourcesOASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Language Specification: http://xml.coverpages.org/DITAv10-OS-LangSpec20050509.pdf

OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Architectural Specification: http://xml.coverpages.org/DITAv10-OS-ArchSpec20050509.pdf

OASIS DITA Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ditaDITA open source kit (http://dita-ot.sourceforge.net/)

Michael Priestley, DITA XML: a reuse by reference architecture for technical documentation, Proceedings of the 19th annual international conference on Computer documentation

Don Day, Erik Hennum, John Hunt, Michael Priestley, David Schell, Nancy Harrison: An XML Architecture for Technical Documentation: The Darwin Information Typing Architecture

DeveloperWorks site: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-dita1/XML Cover page DITA: http://xml.coverpages.org/dita.html"DITA for DocBook: Implementing the Darwin Information Typing Architecture for DocBook."

"An XML-Based Information Architecture for Learning Content, Part 1: A DITA Specialization Design. Use DITA XML to Develop Reusable Learning Content.“ "An XML-Based Information Architecture for Learning Content, Part 2: A DITA Content Pilot. Use DITA XML to Develop Reusable Learning Content." John P. Hunt, Robert Bernard

"How Global Companies can Close the Globalization Gap DITA." Idiom Technologies, Inc.

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=501516.501547&dl=Portal&dl=ACM&type=series&idx=501516&part=Proceedings&WantType=Proceedings&title=ACM%20Special%20Interest%20Group%20for%20Design%20of%20Communications&CFID=11111111&CFTOKEN=2222222

http://www.writersua.com/articles/DITA/

DITA – a language for single source publishing with support for multilinguality

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